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I recently bought a house and am in the process of replacing all the high usage lights with LED bulbs. I have four "chandelier" style lights in the house. Two of them are glass sided and two have shades on each bulb. It is the latter two that are causing a problem. Both have E-12 (candelabra) bulbs. The one in the kitchen has 60W bulbs and the one in the dining room has 45W bulbs. The biggest issue is with the kitchen. I need to find a E-12, 450-500 lumen, 2700-3000K LED bulb that casts even light. What do I mean by even light? Well, I tried this bulb, which is what I used in one of the glass sided lights. It looked quite nice in the glass light, however with a shade on it, you get a very distinct band about half way up. Above is bright, below is dim. If you look at the diffuser, it makes pretty good sense. Also tried this one, but it has the same problem.

There are several different options out on Amazon, but before I go ordering anything, I am hoping that someone has tried some and can give their feedback.

--SS

I can't guarantee your results if you actually try to order from HK or China, but search eBay for "E12 LED filament" and you'll hit the right range of products.

Congrats on the house.

You might want to try a specialty retailer that offers stuff you don't find at the big box stores or even Amazon. I've had good experience with SuperBrightLEDs, but there are others. Unfortunately it looks like the most powerful light they offer in that base/style is just 375 lumens, but you may find something else there (or at another LED specialty site) that meets your needs.

Or you may decide you need to replace the fixture. The upside of owning a house is that you never run out of projects. That's also the downside.

ludi wrote:

I can't guarantee your results if you actually try to order from HK or China, but search eBay for "E12 LED filament" and you'll hit the right range of products.

There are several on Amazon as well. This is currently my first choice. They list is as a 40W equivalent, but if the light output listed is reasonably accurate, 480 lumens, then it might work well enough for both. This one would be a good replacement I think, but at twice the price, I'm not sure it's worth it.

-SS

UberGerbil wrote:

Congrats on the house.

You might want to try a specialty retailer that offers stuff you don't find at the big box stores or even Amazon. I've had good experience with SuperBrightLEDs, but there are others. Unfortunately it looks like the most powerful light they offer in that base/style is just 375 lumens, but you may find something else there (or at another LED specialty site) that meets your needs.

Or you may decide you need to replace the fixture. The upside of owning a house is that you never run out of projects. That's also the downside.

I looked at SuperBrightLEDs and a couple other specialty places. Not a whole lot of luck there either.

As far as owning houses goes, tell me about it. At least right now, they are all small projects that are generally by desire and not absolute need. The house I just sold, on the other hand...

--SS

I wish I could contribute - there are at least three places I recommend for speciality LED bulbs but they're on the wrong side of the pond. Have you tried searching specifically for Philips bulbs? The tend to be the best option when you want maximum lumens in an even spread, but that's a rule of thumb that falls down in certain scenarios, like in my uplighters that use dimpled refelectors behind a diffuser....

It's probably because the EU are more militant about banning incandescent bulbs so we've had to use CCFL's for much longer over here, and LED's have been mainstream for a decade or so, even if we still don't have them everywhere yet.

At least you have the right idea and a shiny new house full of funky chandelliers!

Do a Google search for watts per lumen and you will find that a 100W incandescent can produce about 1600 lumens or 16W per lumen. The newer high powered LED's from Philips and GE can produce a 60W equivalent (incandescent 960 lumens or LED 800 lumens) for 12-13W (73-80 lumens/W) and GE has a 40W equivalent (incandescent 640 lumens or LED 450 lumens) for 4W (71 lumens/W). Those LED lumen values are what the feds suggest is equivalent to the incandescent. Not sure why the LED value is always lower although it could be a spectrum temperature thing. Incandescents probably put out more light in the thermal end of the spectrum that might count as lumens but is not really useful for sight? IDK.

So, it seems reasonable that those 4W bulbs might be pumping out around 4W*(71 to 80) = 280-320W lumens. But not the 480 lumens it says on the site. I'd buy a couple and try them before buying a bunch.

I've got some of the GE 13W 800 lumens (60W equivalent) (the ones on sale at Sam's Club) bulbs in my home and business and they look pretty good in bathrooms and reading lamps but not for your candelabra use.

I imagine those 2700K bulbs will get you closer to what the older style candelabra lights would give but more for that golden glow mood lighting than for reading or working.

EDIT: I forgot to mention I have a couple of the GE 16W LED 1600 lumen bulbs in reading lamps around the house. They are pretty darned good for that even if they look a little wacky. Sams Club had the best price but here is an amazon link... GE 16W LED 1600 lumen bulbs. The newer ones now in stock are smooth and have no fins. But I don't own any of that kind.

I have really liked the GE 7W 400 lumen 3000K dimmable PAR 20 spots for flexible lamps. I have this octopus lamp with 6 bulbs and with just it lit you can throw a couple to your reading chair and the rest can point over at the bookshelf, at a wall painting, across the ceiling, splashing a wall or table top. It feels cosy because most of the room is nearly dark but you are getting interesting light bounced from all those surfaces. Then I have some of the 2W dimmables in little table lamps scattered here and there. My mother grew up in a house that only had candles and oil lamps and she made me appreciate how nice it can be to have variable amounts of light around the room.

My current experience with GU40 spots is that a 4W LED replaces a 40W Halogen spot no prolem, but a true replacement for a typical 60W tungsten incandescent is going to be a golfball LED using around 9W. If you need 100W replacements then you're looking at 18W with a heatsink.

LED's are best in smaller wattages, I'd go as far as to say that my 3-bulb kitchen lights using 6W LEDs is brigter than the 18W single bulb in the corner of the living room, which makes sense if you look at halogen equivalent ratings - it's like 3x 50W is better than 1x 100W.

Didnt we have a long thread about LED bulbs not to long ago?

tanker27 wrote:

Didnt we have a long thread about LED bulbs not to long ago?

We did, and I wasn't intending to start re-hashing a bunch of stuff, though to so degree I suppose that is inevitable. I was actually looking for a 360 degree (or close) candelabra bulb in the 450-500 lumen range. They are relatively hard to find and just like incandescent bulbs, every one is different. So I figured I'd toss it out the gerbils at large to see if anyone else had done a similar search.

I ended up ordering one of these: Concord Led Filament Candelabra

We shall see how it works.

--SS

Mr Bill wrote:

I imagine those 2700K bulbs will get you closer to what the older style candelabra lights would give but more for that golden glow mood lighting than for reading or working.

In this case that would be good as this is dining room/kitchen dining area lighting, so a little warmer light isn't a bad thing. That said, I put in Sylvania 2700k 700lumen recessed spots in the kitchen to replace the PAR38 cans and while the light is certainly on the warmer side, it isn't bad. My preference would have been 3000k, but these are fine and they have wife approval.

Just a followup.



The back three bulbs are 60W incandescent. The front three are LED bulbs. Left to right.

GE Clear Bent Tip Candelabra Base Dimmable LED bulb: 2700K, 7W, 500 lumens
Concord Led Filament Candelabra Light Bulb: 2700K, 4W, 480 lumens
EcoSmart Soft White G16.5 LED bulb: 2700K, 6.5W, 500 lumens

All three LED bulbs seem to give off pretty equivalent light. You can see the banding on the two bulbs with diffusers. The filament LED bulb looks to do a good job of replicating the incandescents. It does have one flaw though. This is common to all the filament LED bulbs I have seen. They are direct drive bulbs. This means that there are enough LEDs in the bulb, in series, to drive directly from 120VAC. I figure there are somewhere around 80 LEDs. Approx 3.5V drop per LED, plus a little few for safety margin, times two -- one set for positive side of the AC and one for negative. This means a 60Hz flicker. My eyes don't see it, but that may be partly because the rest of the light in the room doesn't have a flicker. However, it showed up as banding when taking pictures. See below (I mucked with the exposure to accentuate the banding).



I'll have to decide if I want to drop the money for five more, especially since the price went up ~$2 (thanks Amazon dynamic pricing).

--SS

Oh, interesting. I didn't know about the direct drive issue. I was wondering how they managed to cram the power regulation circuitry into a candelabra-style base... and the answer is, they didn't! That would also imply that if one LED in a string goes bad, half of the bulb goes dark. I wonder how common that failure mode is?

just brew it! wrote:

Oh, interesting. I didn't know about the direct drive issue. I was wondering how they managed to cram the power regulation circuitry into a candelabra-style base... and the answer is, they didn't! That would also imply that if one LED in a string goes bad, half of the bulb goes dark. I wonder how common that failure mode is?

I would expect it to be the most common mode. The big question is does two of the filaments go dark, or does half the LEDS on each string go dark. The latter is probably preferable, but also probably more expensive to manufacture as you would have to get two strings of LEDs in each filament.

--SS

Once I get the lab equipment unpacked, I may do some tests to see if I can figure it out.

-SS

The fact that everyone uses correlated color temperature and seems to completely ignore spectral power distribution in these LED bulb threads amazes me.

No mention of CRI or netamerism index either.

BlackDove wrote:

The fact that everyone uses correlated color temperature and seems to completely ignore spectral power distribution in these LED bulb threads amazes me.

No mention of CRI or netamerism index either.

CRI on the GE and EcoSmart have a CRI of 80, for what its worth.

--SS

Thats lower than i thought it would be. Meanwhile incandescents are all 100 like they have been since the incention of the light bulb lol.

BlackDove wrote:

The fact that everyone uses correlated color temperature and seems to completely ignore spectral power distribution in these LED bulb threads amazes me.

The fact that you continue to spam every LED bulb and monitor thread with rants about SPD amazes *me*.

just brew it! wrote:

BlackDove wrote:

The fact that everyone uses correlated color temperature and seems to completely ignore spectral power distribution in these LED bulb threads amazes me.

The fact that you continue to spam every LED bulb and monitor thread with rants about SPD amazes *me*.

Unless you are a professional artist, filmmaker, optical physicist or photographer. None of that really matters. The overwhelming majority of people just care about cost of the bulb versus life expectancy and energy consumption.

Incandescence bulbs have always had to own set of issues with coloration, especially the old blubs (they tend to emit more strongly in the redder parts of the visual spectrum and infrared).

BlackDove wrote:

The fact that everyone uses correlated color temperature and seems to completely ignore spectral power distribution in these LED bulb threads amazes me.

No mention of CRI or netamerism index either.

Gawd dammit, back to the foe list for you.

Why do you persist to crap every thread?

Here's A website that sells a kinds of LEDS https://www.superbrightleds.com/

Krogoth wrote:

just brew it! wrote:

BlackDove wrote:

The fact that everyone uses correlated color temperature and seems to completely ignore spectral power distribution in these LED bulb threads amazes me.

The fact that you continue to spam every LED bulb and monitor thread with rants about SPD amazes *me*.

Unless you are a professional artist, filmmaker, optical physicist or photographer. None of that really matters. The overwhelming majority of people just care about cost of the bulb versus life expectancy and energy consumption.

Incandescence bulbs have always had to own set of issues with coloration, especially the old blubs (they tend to emit more strongly in the redder parts of the visual spectrum and infrared).

Being the some of a professional artist and an amateur photographer, I am quite aware of the impact of the light source on perceived color of objects. Funny thing about incandescent bulbs -- the generally have a CRI of 100, but are actually pretty crappy at color rendering due to the low color temperature. High color temp incandescents ("daylight" bulbs) tend to have a lower CRI due to the way they are made. All CRI measures is how close the colors match under the light as compared to a black body radiator of the same color temperature, up to 5000K and then a specific "daylight" above that. One more thing about CRI, it doesn't tell you what colors will look wrong or how they will look wrong. Blackdove is correct in pointing out that spectral power distribution is important there.

Anyway, since this is for dining room/dining area, the warmer "soft white, 2700K light gives a pleasing warm feel. As far as the CRI goes, I'm not doing photography in this setting, I'm not doing anything related to color matching, in fact, and it is close enough that food doesn't look "off". Like so many other things it comes down to personal preference. What looks good to me (and the wife) is all that matters in this case. My general preference is 2700k for living areas, 3000k for the kitchen, and 4000-4500k for my lab/hobby work area. Just personal preference.

--SS

I'm not sure what measurement describes this, but the color on fluorescents always looks terrible to me. LEDs seem a lot better, even if both are 80 CRI. And yes, I'd call it important.

SecretSquirrel wrote:

My general preference is 2700k for living areas, 3000k for the kitchen, and 4000-4500k for my lab/hobby work area. Just personal preference.

--SS

I'm much the same. I also use 3500k in the bathroom so I can see things a bit more clearly (for instance if I get something in my eye), and 5500k in the bedroom closet, because it helps me discern the colors better when picking out clothes.

Everywhere else indoors, I strongly prefer a warmer 2700k. I've even switched back to incandescent in some areas, such as the living room and bedroom. I have a few Cree Truewhite 2700k in various spots, and find them to be much more pleasant than CFL. I can't speak for other LED types, as I haven't really delved into them yet.

Y'know, speaking of Cree... my dad's been using those (mostly the 2700K version, 800 lumen) all over the house. Mostly good, but I've had a few failures - although they were happy to send me new ones without the receipt, and didn't even want the old ones back. I also picked up a Phillips 3000K (?) 800 lumen bulb at Home Depot a little while ago because it was fairly cheap - $3 or $4. One of those funny flat-styled ones. So far so good, and it feels more durable than the Crees.

localhostrulez wrote:

Y'know, speaking of Cree... my dad's been using those (mostly the 2700K version, 800 lumen) all over the house. Mostly good, but I've had a few failures - although they were happy to send me new ones without the receipt, and didn't even want the old ones back. I also picked up a Phillips 3000K (?) 800 lumen bulb at Home Depot a little while ago because it was fairly cheap - $3 or $4. One of those funny flat-styled ones. So far so good, and it feels more durable than the Crees.

I guess I shouldn't have thrown mine out. I had a 1600 lumen 2700k Cree just stop working on me last weekend, but I think I just tossed it assuming I couldn't go anywhere without the receipt. I also a few months ago had one attached to a dimmer where the dimmer died, and I swear it was the bulb's fault, because the replacement dimmer is starting to act up in the same way as the old one.

I see all of this sturm und drang over LED bulbs, look over to the stash of 100W incandescents purchased when their extinction was going to be a thing, and worry not one whit.

Yes, I'm a kulak.

I've noticed that some CFLs and LEDs can cause audible arcing in the light switch when switching it on and off. Some of the bulbs on the market must have a really wonky power factor. I've replaced two light switches (so far) because the arcing eventually burns them out.

localhostrulez wrote:

I'm not sure what measurement describes this, but the color on fluorescents always looks terrible to me. LEDs seem a lot better, even if both are 80 CRI. And yes, I'd call it important.

Thats because CRI doesnt tell the full story. The reason CFLs with the same CRI look worse(and are even worse for your eyes than the already damaging light of LEDs) is their spectral power distribution. Its usually four spikes in red, green, blue and UV on fluorescents. LEDs are a spike in blue and a lump of other frequencies.

You also need to know the metamerism index, which is never listed on consumer LEDs or CFLs. Thats also the reason you should never light films or photography with WLEDs.

LEDs and fluorescents, even high CRI ones, still have terrible color rendering compared to incandescents because of the metamerisms that their spiky SPDs cause.