As your incandescents burn out, it's a good time to consider switching to LED bulbs. LEDs have an impressive lifespan (20-something years!) and are very cost-effective. Now's the right time to switch to LEDs. These bulbs have made significant advances over the last few years, finally delivering the warm light incandescents have comforted us with for decades.Because there are so many LED varieties, choosing an LED is entirely different from picking up an incandescent. Before you head to the store, find out what you need to know about choosing the right LED bulbs.Forget what you know about incandescents -- your watts are no good here.When shopping for bulbs, you're probably accustomed to looking for watts, an indication of how bright the bulb will be. The brightness of LEDs, however, is determined a little differently. Contrary to common belief, wattage isn't an indication of brightness, but a measurement of how much energy the bulb draws. For incandescents, there is an accepted correlation between the watts drawn and the brightness, but for LEDs, watts aren't a great predictor of how bright the bulb will be.

(The point, after all, is that they draw less energy.)For example, an LED bulb with comparable brightness to a 60W incandescent is only 8 to 12 watts.But don't bother doing the math -- there isn't a uniform way to covert incandescent watts to LED watts. Instead, a different form of measurement should be used: lumens.The lumen (lm) is the real measurement of brightness provided by a light bulb, and is the number you should look for when shopping for LEDs. For reference, here's a chart that shows the watt-lumen conversion for incandescents and LEDs. As you can see in the chart above, an incandescent can draw up to five times as many watts for the same number of lumens. Get a sense of the brightness (in lumens) you need before heading to the store, and throw away your affinity for watts.You can always count on incandescents providing a warm, yellowish hue. But LEDs come in a wide range of colors.As shown off by the Philips Hue, LED bulbs are capable of displaying an impressive color range, from purple to red, to a spectrum of whites and yellows.

For the home, however, you're likely looking for something similar to the light that incandescents produce.The popular colors available for LEDs are "warm white" or "soft white," and "bright white."Warm white and soft white will produce a yellow hue, close to incandescents, while bulbs labeled as bright white will produce a whiter light, closer to daylight and similar to what you see in retail stores.How To Change Parking Bulb Mazda 6If you want to get technical, light color (color temperature) is measured in kelvins. Stuff To Hang From Rear View MirrorThe lower the number, the warmer (yellower) the light. Double Curtain Rod Brackets DiySo, your typical incandescent is somewhere between 2,700 and 3,500K. If that's the color you're going for, look for this range while shopping for LED bulbs.

LED bulbs are like hybrid cars: cheaper to operate but pricey upfront.When switching to LED bulbs, don't expect to save buckets of cash. Instead, think of it as an investment. Luckily, competition has increased and LED bulbs have come down in price (like this $5 LED from Philips), but you should still expect to pay much more than an incandescent. Eventually, the LED bulbs will pay off, and in the meantime, you'll enjoy less heat production, longer bulb life, and even the option of controlling them with your smartphone.Bottom line: unless you're replacing many incandescent bulbs in a large house, you won't see significant savings in your electricity bill.For a detailed breakdown of the cost-effectiveness of LED bulbs, check out this useful post.Because of their circuitry, LEDs are not always compatible with traditional dimming switches. In some cases, the switch must be replaced. Other times, you'll pay a little more for a compatible LED.Most dimmers, which were likely designed to work with incandescents, work by cutting off the amount of electricity sent to the bulb.

The less electricity drawn, the dimmer the light. But with your newly acquired knowledge of LED lingo, you know that there is no direct correlation between LED brightness and energy drawn. This guide explains why some LEDs will hum, flickr, or buzz when tied to a dimmer.If you'd like your LED to be dimmable, you need to do one of two things: find LED bulbs compatible with traditional dimmers, or replace your current dimming switch with a leading-edge (LED-compatible) dimmer. When shopping for LEDs, it helps to know what kind of dimming switch you have, but if you don't know (or would rather not go through the trouble), simply search for LED bulbs compatible with standard incandescent dimmers. To make things easier for you, we tested a slew of them to find out which LED bulbs work best with dimmers.Knowing where it's OK to place an LED will ensure that the bulb won't fizzle ahead of its time.You probably know that LED bulbs run dramatically cooler than their incandescent cousins, but that doesn't mean they don't produce heat.

LED bulbs do get hot, but the heat is pulled away by a heat sink in the base of the bulb. From there, the heat dissipates into the air and the LED bulb stays cool, helping to keep its promise of a very long life.And therein lies the problem: the bulb needs a way to dissipate the heat. If an LED bulb is placed in an enclosed housing, the heat won't have anywhere to go, sending it right back to the bulb, and sentencing it to a slow and painful death.Consider where you'd like to place your LED bulbs. If you have fully or semi-enclosed fixtures you need to light up, look for LEDs that are approved for recessed or enclosed spaces.These days when it comes to energy efficient lighting there are a lot of choices. One of those choices is the color temperature of the light. No longer are we stuck with orange for incandescent, green for fluorescent. Using light bulb color wisely in your home can have positive effects on your and your families lives. Below you'll find my tips for choosing light bulb color.

Philips SlimStyle LED Bulbs Most of the LED Bulbs I've been using have been the Philips SlimStyle Daylight LED bulbs which are also available in a warmer Soft White color. About Light Bulb Color The color of light a bulb puts out is measured in degrees Kelvin (K). The use of Kelvin degrees has to do with the color iron glows when it's at a certain temperature. Lower color temperatures indicate a redder light while high temperatures indicate a bluer light. Most incandescent bulbs emit a warm light in the range of 2,700 - 3,300 K and many LED lights try to mimic this color since we're so used to it. They are sometimes labeled as Warm White or Soft White. LED bulbs are also available as Daylight bulbs with color temperature in the range of 5,000 - 6,500 K. Natural daylight on clear day is about 5,000K while on an overcast day it's about 6,500K. In between warm and daylight you'll find Cool White, Neutral and Bright White bulbs which range from 3,500 - 4100 K.

For the most part in these tips I've limited the choices between warm and daylight bulbs because those are the two colors available in the Philips bulbs I mentioned. If you feel the daylight color is too blue for your tastes you can substitute a Cool White bulb instead of daylight but I suggest you try some daylight bulbs first. My recommendations should make the harshness less noticeable to those that don't care for daylight bulbs. How Light Color Affects Us There have been a number of studies on how the color of light affects us. For example, bright cool light during the day helps increase mood, alertness and productivity. At night, warmer light helps us sleep better and relax so in the morning we're less grumpy. Blue light at night can negatively affect our circadian rhythm, our internal clock that tells us when we should sleep and when we should wake up. Light color even affects how we perceive time. Time appears to pass faster with blue light than it does with red light and blue colors suppress appetite.

I've always had problems with sleeping and waking up on time and I've found that controlling the light color at night before bed has helped me a lot. When I bought orange UV safety glasses along with a UV flashlight to detect pet stains I read a lot of reviews of users using them at night to help them sleep and that worked for me too. Bright lights also make it hard for you to go to sleep compared to dimmer lights. My light bulb color recommendations try to factor in these effects. How Light Color Affects Our Vision Our brain adapts to how we see light. If you're sitting in a room lit by incandescent lights at night you may not even realize that everything has a yellow or orange hue caused by the light. Sometimes this makes it difficult to differentiate between colors. Have you ever spent a long time at the paint store or paint department selecting the perfect colors for your walls only to have the room look like a completely different color when it dries?

That's because the store's lights have different color characteristics than the lights in your room. That's why you should always check the color with samples in your room. It's easier to interpret colors correctly with daylight bulbs. Cool Lights Up, Warm Lights Down For most rooms, including living rooms and dining rooms I like to include both daylight and warm colored lights. Living Room with Overhead Daylight Colored Bulbs The way I like to do it is have Daylight bulbs in ceiling fixtures  (usually with dimmers) to provide bright general lighting. Surface mount ceiling fixtures, recessed lights, etc. This is good lighting when you just get home from work, especially in the winter when the days get shorter. Living Room with lower Warm Colored Bulbs Wall sconces, floor and table lamps with warm colored bulbs will provide a less intense light used to provide a more relaxing, cozier feel. Switch off the overhead lights and turn on the warm colored table lamps.

Having warm and cool colored bulbs on at the same time can sometimes seem odd but I've found that having the cool lights up top as general lighting and warm lights in lamps placed lower looks quite natural. It's similar to having daylight coming in from the window while incandescent bulbs are on for additional lighting. Cool Light During the Day, Warm Lights at Night In addition to my Cool Up/Warm Down rule I like to use cool lights during the day and warm lights at night. Dining Room Daylight Bulbs in Cans Dining Room with Warm Lights Bedroom with bright daylight ceiling light In the morning when you first get up, switch on the daylight bulbs in the ceiling fixtures to provide you with a bright, invigorating light to get you going. Bedroom with warm colored table, floor and wall lights. In the evening switch to your warm bulbs in your wall, floor and bedside lamps to help you get to sleep faster. As the night goes on and you're ready to crawl back to bed switch off more lights until it's just your bedside lamp until you're ready to put that book down and go to bed.

Cool Lights For Getting Ready When you're getting ready in the morning it's important to view colors accurately. Closets should have daylight bulbs as should any room you get dressed in whether it's your bedroom or a large walk-in dressing room closet. That way you'll be wearing clothes that match as well in sunlight and office light as they did in your home. Bathroom lights should also use bright and cool colored bulbs to help you wake up in the morning and about 50% of you reading this will appreciate getting your make up colors right. In bathrooms it may be difficult to fit in warm colored nights as well but if you have the space to fit in a little table or accent lamp that'd be great. If not, even a small nightlight is enough light to help you see enough to brush your teeth before bed, remove your make up and for the other 50% of us, not miss the bowl. There are even these warm colored battery powered LED lights you can stick on your wall that have motion as well as light sensors so they turn on when someone's in the room but won't turn on when there's already light in the room.