We have far too many [12v MR16] downlighters in our house and I’d love to move to LED if possible.
Is anybody producing a good warm light version yet?

I swapped out my lights to LEDs earlier this year. Got them of eBay for about
£8 each. 9w I think/50 w equivalent.
They seemed a funny colour at first but I don’t notice it now. Just as
bright as well.

Look at the Philips master GU10 range. The 7W warm whites are pretty good (match a 35W halogen for output), but reds come up a little dull and blues a little bright. They’ve also just started doing a 8W CRI90 version that should solve that. Not tried them yet, though

Obvioulsy being GU10, you’ll need to ditch your existing 12V transformers. Not a bad thing, as even the MR16 ones have transformers in, and some 12V Leds don’t play nicely with existing TXs.

Philips also do a 10W MR16 that’s quite bright, but it has a tiny little fan in for cooling, which whines annoyingly!

I’ve tried a few different types from 3.5W to 5W claiming to be 35W or 50W equivalents and they’ve all been pretty poor so far, probably 25W equivalent at best. Also tried converting a couple of MR16s to GU10 where there’s a wider range of LED bulbs and they also don’t seem to be up to the job yet. They’re ok for small areas which were probably over-lit previously so we have them in bathrooms and the hallway but no use for the kitchen, and I’ve drawn the line at putting dubious ebay with claimed high outputs bulbs in the ceiling as most of ours aren’t in fireproof fittings!

eBay 6w ones have worked well for me. Colour wise it can be difficult getting it right – there’s warm (2700K) and daylight (6000K). If you spend a bit of time you can find an in between colour of about 5000K, which is perfect.

The Philips warm white is nothing like halogen – avoid. The other thing to bear in mind is that some of the higher power versions are slightly longer than their halogen equivalent.

My own experiences are pretty much the same as Rio’s.

Claimed output equivalence is usually a bit low by comparison. ( eg the ones I got which were 5w&6w were supposed to be equivalent to 50w halogens – Nope – 35w seemed closer & the colour was not what I was looking for.

I’m still looking for an LED replacement ( either 12v MR16 or 230v GU10 style) giving the same warm friendly feel and output of a 50w halogen.

( Not tried the Phillips master range though)

Chris

You don’t necessarily need to go for such high wattage LED bulbs, try and have a think about where they will be used. I use GU10 bulbs in my flat so not a direct comparison however below gives you an idea of what I use and what may be practical for your application. All my bulbs have come from B&Q or Home base and although not as cheap as eBay were not ridiculously expensive.

In my hall (4’x15′) I changed 3 50W halogens for 3 1.2W surface mount GU10 bulbs, these provide more than enough light for a hallway. The surface mount LED’s provide a really wide spread so work well for this type of application.

In my living room (12’x14′) I changed from 3 50W halogens to a regular pendant fitting with energy saving bulb and 3 2W LED’s, I also have a lamp with a energy saving bulb for reading. This is the only room I feel I could do with a little more light but 90% of the time it is fine.

I’ve got 13 x 5w led gu10s in my kitchen bought from dx extreme. Lovely light, whiter that halogen but much nicer than first gen led light. BUT… They aren’t particularly reliable, they fail in all sorts of unusual ways, flicker, dim, pop… Etc. but they are cheap.

I got 8 last December to replace the 4 down lighters in our bathroom and 4 in the kitchen. Been great so far. They are 300lmn ones I think, warm white, but a wide 60deg lens. I did try one 45deg on, that while bright enough was too spotty. Had 2 failures, both of which were in the same lamp unit (which was killing bulbs quickly before the swap as well), both replaced FOC by Amazon (bought from fulfilled by Amazon seller). They are slightly longer than halogens, which was fine in the kitchen bar light, however in the bathroom I had to remove a small ceramic bit from the mounts to make room (Think this is there to keep the heat off the casing). They run so much cooler than the 50W halogens they replaced!

I’m a lighting designer, so I have played with quite a few different flavours at work before I took the plunge and spent my own cash.

Output and colour rendition are the big issues. Cold white is more efficient, but is that horrible blue/purple colour. A good warm white is much closer to halogen. Experience says a rule of thumb is to multiply the LED wattage by 5 to get equivalent halo output. So a 7W LED=35W halogen.

Colour rendition is the tricky one. The “colour” of the light might be appropriately warm, but there often ends up being some nasty wavelength spikes. Typically red objects lit by LED look very flat in comparison to halogen, where blue or purple *pop* far more. Greens can often look quite flat too. There’s a Colour Rendition Index (CRI). Anything over 90 should be good. Over 95 is superb, but I’ve never seen that in an LED yet. Over 80 should be OK. If they don’t state CRI, then avoid.

The 7W Philips masters I’ve tried lost a bit (maybe 5%) on the reds, but gained a bit on the blues. Noticeable when you have it side by side with halogen, but not offensive on its own.

I’m looking at the £15 B&Q ones (I know, but have a gift card) that are 5.5W claiming to be 50W replacement, to replace my crappy 11W GFL GU10s.

Anyone have any opinions on those? They are already very white white so we’re used to that in the kitchen. The reason they are crappy is because they take forever to warm up and are extremely dim when cold.

I replaced our kitchen halogens with the LEDLite bulbs from TLC (towards the bottom of that page).

I’d ended up with warm white in the eating area and daylight white over the work areas with higher power bulbs. The warm is too warm, the bright too cold – the middle one could be really good. No problem with light levels and they seem reliable. The metal rim of the heat sink is very slightly thicker than on a glass halogen bulb but they fitted without problem. Was worrying to see a couple of partially melted transformers and bits of wire behind the, “professionally” fitted halogens…..

I fitted the Ledlite ones as posted above in Warm white in our bathroom. Not quite as bright as Halogen but still pretty good, not to harsh a colour and cheaper to run (I managed to get 4 of them on Ebay for £14 delivered which someone had left over from a job).

Oh yes, forgot to mention that Lee filters do a specific LED gel which apparently does a decent job of converting 6700K to 5200K (tungsten).

+1 for the type from TLC. I’m moving to these as a couple from my early adoption phase have failed.

I’ve been pretty happy with the philips one. It’s whiter than halogen, but I prefer that in the kitchen.

I’m using GU10 CFL‘s in a CFL-specific unit. Very dim when first switched on but then provide a nice light. Mrs sl2000 can’t cope with the light from LEDs but has no problem with these.

I’m a lighting designer, so I have played with quite a few different flavours at work before I took the plunge and spent my own cash.

So, for a newbuild would you go for LED lights using ‘standard’ fittings running at 240V or look at running low voltage circuits for lighting and a single transformer? I’ve not looked into it yet – suspect the ‘old’ bulb interfaces (GU10/bayonet cap etc etc) will be around for decades yet but they were designed for filament lighting.

At the price they are, how long would it take to recoup the cost of 20 halogen ones?

I keep thinking about them but I haven’t had a single bulb fail from my 20 halogens in a kitchen refurb 3.5 years ago.

I think I worked out it was a little over a year for me. It depends how much you use them of course.

As a very rough calculation – 20 50w halogens is a kilowatt so think a little over 10p per hour (Energy saving trust actually says 14p). 5 hours per day (2 in morning, 3 in evening) is 50p a day/ £180 a year.

how long would it take to recoup the cost of 20 halogen ones?

A long time. The TLC bulbs for example are about £15 pounds each so 20 is £300. At 14p per kWh that’s 2142 hours or about 3 years if they’re all on for an average of 2 hours a day. No doubt within 3 years something better and more economical will have come along – those TLC bulbs for example seem to have gone through 2 generations since I first saw them. If you’re really being pedantic you should also take into account that you’ll be using them more in winter when the “waste” energy from halogens actually contributes to heating your house so the economics look even worse. Not an easy decision as a replacement IMHO although I’d use them in any new fittings.

It was the worrying evidence of heat damage to transformers and cables that convinced me that it was worth doing sooner rather than later.

The economy gains are becoming fairly small now – you’ve dropped from 35-50W for Halogen down to sub 5watt for LED. Lumen per watt isn’t going a lot further but price should continue to drop.

Check out http://www.ecostar.photonstarlighting.co.uk they have some good products but also check out http://www.photonstartechnology.co.uk/learn/led_basics/ if you want to learn a bit more about LED downlights.

🙂