Hi
I have a lot of wall lights (ses small screw type) and gu10 bulbs within the house.
I’m looking at changing to Led lights, anyone done it? Savings? Where did you buy from?
Thanks

Who do the leds belong to?

Many many threads on this already – I thought about it but for decent LED GU10’s you are looking at around £10 a piece. Can’t justify that at the moment. Even my sparky chum can’t get them for much less than that (avoid cheap ones, poor colour, beam pattern and life span)

I recently replaced mine with the B&Q own-brand (Diall?) 4.5W ones as they were on special offer.

Selling for €14.99 for 2 in Castorama (French DIY shed owned by B&Q).

Really, really pleased with them. Brighter than the 50W halogens they replaced. Wife reckons the light is “colder”, but I don’t even notice the difference. No problems installing and none have failed yet (8 weeks or so) so reliability looks good.

At €7.50 (~£6.25) each, they pay for themselves in barely 3 months if you have the lights on a lot (we work from home), plus you’d barely get 2 halogens for that price anyway.

We replaced some of our halogens with 4.5 watt LEDs and hated them; they were dim and the light was a horrible pinkish colour. We sent them back.

I got a load of Phillips non-dim 7w (I think) for £5 each in sainsbury sale but I think I saw them at that price again somewhere recently and robert dyas are doing osram 2w £10 for 3 or £15 for 6.

So kitchen and bathroom went from 915w to 104w, and I am expecting much much longer life. At around £2 each for a halogen GU10 its a bargain.

If my experience with GU10s is typical then the longevity of the LEDs is such that they soon pay for themselves.

Difficult to get 50 watt equivalent LED GU10’s with a decent beam angle for under £10. I do have some Phillips ones in my office – I was going to use them in the kitchen but they are just too “spot” like and made the corners of the room too dark.

All LED lights are not created equal. Try before you buy! Look for units with less LED units per light – this means they are high-power white lighting LEDs, not just loads of bright white signalling LEDs crammed in. They will also be brighter for a given power consumption.

I also bought the 5W B+Q ones – 4 white LED’s each at 1.25W approx.

Very good colour, though there is a degree of imbalance in the spectrum that makes some colours within the room funky-ish. They do flicker at 50Hz, but if you don’t mind striplights, then you should have no worries.

Highly rated!

As-for when you get your investment back… you work it out based on saved power [45W saved per bulb for me] in KW fractions [ie I saved 9*45W or 450W or .45KW] multiplied by your price per unit [usually in KW/H].

I think for me about 25p/KWH in daytime] – so about 12p/Hour in this flat with all of them on.

I had about 55 50W halogens replaced last year. Can’t remember exactly what we paid but they were £10+ per fitting per lamp. Got a sparky to do it. Total bill was about £750. However we got a £500 grant as it is deemed an energy saving measure.
Not one light has failed since. In my experience I would have replaced about 10 halogens in the time. I prefer the light to the halogens as well. I reckon my electricity bill has come down significantly and not just because I stop my four kids pocket money when they repeatedly leave the lights on!
Bit of a no-brainer IMHO.

Been using these for years still going strong after about 3 years.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B006UR5IUY/ref=oh_details_o03_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I got some Philips GU 10 2w from Tesco recently. They were on offer 3 for 2, so worked out a slightly more reasonable £3.33 a bulb. Only done a few spotlights, but seem a nice balanced output.

…non-dimmers, though.

@crookofdevon,
Where do you apply for the grant as we’ve got 41 to replace round our house?

We replaced all of the bulbs in our flat, you notice the slight difference in light tone for a few days but not after that. They’re fine so far except we got bargain ones from B&Q and they’re quite narrow beam. The only place that was an issue was the living room where there are four bulbs quite far apart, so we replaced them with these: http://www.ukelectricalsupplies.com/2-x-save-light-high-power-gu10-5-watt-non-dimmable-led-warm-white.htm. Much better, very wide beam angle and not a bad price.

I replaced my kitchen and bathroom ones with the cheapo ones off ebay (about £3 each), warm white and 5w and I can hardly notice a difference. In fact, some of the newer 5w COB ones are a better light that non led.

I did my house with the 4.5watt gu10s and various others from ledhut. A big big improvement over the energy saving bulbs the previous owner left us- the ones that need three weeks to warm up.

Have them in all my lights except the outdoor lights with sensors on as they are cheap sensors and leak current causing the led to flash periodically.

Our leccy bils decreased significantly and i havnt had to change. Single bulb – infact i dont even keep spares any more…. Gone are the days of chasing a burst halogen round all the fittings in the room after one goes.

Even started fitted the gu10leds under the shelving in my garage for work lighting – using some of the poor first attempts at led bulbs i got my hands on before finding quality beam patterns

Waiting on sensor 400 watt equivalent floods for outaide to come down to sensible money before i change them . My outdoor worklight uses more power than the whole house !

We’ve got two lots of GU10 ceiling lighting in the kitchen.
One lot has LEDs fitted the other has regular Halogens, The Halogen bulbs regularly go pop but at least you can see by them, The LEDs are Pretty feeble TBH, but they are a few years old now, I’m assuming LEDs have come along since I bought them, My missus however won’t be convinced though and won’t let me fit LEDs at the other end of the kitchen (I’ll probably just do it without telling her one day)…

The LEDs are much more robust and I’ve not had to replace one in over three years, in those terms they are good VFM… but I think you need to spend quite a lot per “Bulb” to get any decent level of light from them.

If more current ones are putting out more light for a reasonable outlay then I’d consider them but I tend not to believe their equivalent Wattage claims at the minute, I need to go and see what’s available actually as I’ve not looked into GU10 LEDs for a while.

We changed all ours to philips warm white 4.5w. Bought them at led hut. They are a single led type. Just buy a couple to try then if happy replace the lot which is how we did it.

I changed 2 of the 5 50w GU10 Halogen spots in our kitchen for 7W 29×5050 SMD day white (540 Lumen) from Brightlightz. The change in colour temperature against the Halogen spots was very obvious especially as the house’s wiring is suspect, the exsiting 50W halogens are noticably warmer than they ought to be. I preferred the light especially during the daytime as it matched the light coming throught the small north facing window. My wife complained about the coldness of the light and the flicker so I changed them back.

Do the more expensive LED spots suffer from flicker?

Fitted to these in my kitchen and to a couple of other standard 3 head light fittings around the house. Much better light quality, fraction of the electrical load and you don’t lose your finger tips if you were to touch them! 3yr manufacturers guarantee on them also… and there is no flicker, these work at mains voltage so no transformer required

Bulbs

None of my leds flicker.

We have all new wiring in our house though. Might be something you want to get checked tbh.

I also bought the 5W B+Q ones – 4 white LED’s each at 1.25W approx.

Very good colour, though there is a degree of imbalance in the spectrum that makes some colours within the room funky-ish. They do flicker at 50Hz, but if you don’t mind striplights, then you should have no worries.

Highly rated!

Likewise, around a tenner a pair at the moment, dimmable versions for £13

just got 14 4.5W GU10 from Ledhut in their 20% off sale, with an extra 10% quidco, made them about £6 each.
I perfer them to the 50W halogens they replaced.
6 months and they will have paid for themselves in electricity saving, and then there is the not having to replace each bulb about once a year saving also.

Just bought 6 x 5W GU10 from screwfix for £5.75ea.Screwfix click
Only using one in the kitchen at the moment – don’t notice any difference to the other halogen lights.
The other 5 are halogen – would you replace them now, or wait until they pop? It seems crazy to throw away perfectly good bulbs, but they do cost a lot to run!

If your GU10s regularly pop, it’s usually because they’ve been installed in an un-vented suspended ceiling and they are simply over heating. They give off a metric shitload of heat and are more often then not installed in situations where the heat becomes a problem.

approx 4W homebase one’s £10 a pair (Warm White not Cool White in Colour)
Very pleased with them. Casing is white not silver/metal, very reliable so far, approx 6 months, far better than the cheap chinese led’s they replaced.

When LEDs overtake halogen in brightness and spread, I’ll do the swop.

global, those that I linked to above have a wider spread than the halogens they replaced. Brightnesswise they seem brighter than the previous set up if anything. No reason to regret doing our whole flat.

Changed 10 GU10s in the dining room and kitchen. Warm white 4.5W and £12 each from our local DIY shop. I wouldn’t go back. The fittings stay cool, of course, which means they are under much less stress. Non-dimmable, but I’m not bothered. Had some of the earier generation, too dim, too blue. The latest generation are execellent.

Most of our house is now lit with LEDs from here http://www.ledhut.co.uk/

We’ve just had the entire office refitted with LED lights. The groundfloor is now lit like the set of 2001 🙂

Who do the leds belong to?

Pedantry fail.

The question is actually “what belongs to Led ?”

My Castorama/B&Q ones appear to have a wider spread (and be brighter…) than the halogens they replaced.

Still cant find 50 watt equivalent GU10’s with a wide beam (60 degrees or more) for under £10 each.

Rockhopper, look at my link – they’re wide angle, 5W and I got four (i.e. 2 x twin packs) delivered for just under £20.

what about the cheap ones on eBay – are they cr@p?

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/331021559655

these are £1.69 each…….

Question-
I’ve just bought a property (yay) with loads of halogen spotlights.
I want to swap them to LEDs.
Do I need to change the transformer if I’m changing to LED bulbs, or is it simply bulbs???

Theflatboy – 5 watts/400 lumens is quite a bit less than the equivalent of 50watts though. 620 ish lumens is equivalent to 50 watts.

is it worth it? yes

I changed my bulbs to led’s from various sources, ikea, online etc and saved about £30 from my leccy bill compared to the same quarter from the previous year.

I bought some that were meant to be “warm-white”… looks more like “morgue-white”.

Be careful what you buy.

Just make sure you get the colour temperature correct, you should be looking at 2700k.

From experience you need the better quality brands such as Philips of Toshiba to achieve this which also means you are looking at around £10 min per lamp.