LEDs are definitely the way to go for the future. They are more efficient. They last much, much longer. And they can do things no other bulbs can do, like change color at the touch of a remote control.

But yeah, for now they are expensive.

 

I have a few CFLs, but not many. And I have LEDs in the undercounter lights in the kitchen. I'll wait until they come down in price and start buying those for other lights. Do they come in the standard bulb base (the fat one?), or will I have to buy/convert lights/lamps?

 

if anyone needs bulbs check out bulbs.com We deal with them and their prices are fantastic.

 

Almost every lamp in my house has been converted to CFL's. I will go to LED's when the price comes down to a more reasonable price.

 

And LED lights do not contain mercury so they can be disposed of easily, unlike CFL. Or so I heard anyway.

 

Check Sams Club for LED spots, sometimes they get some in and they are way cheap! I bought 2 last year for something like $15

 

if you look at LED lamps look carefully at the color balance and lumen output.
they just aren't that bright.

 

That is a issue that is being dealt with, power density and "color" issues are things that all of the manufactures are working on. At this time the "white" LEDs tend to be very blueish, (cold temp), but the brightness issue is being a little quicker. I bought LED dive lights this winter, and they have similar output to an incandescent lamp, but the color temp is waaaay cold.

That said, high output LEDs are still quite expensive and the low cost units have very little output.

 

I am very disappointed in the CFLs that we've installed. When we had our basement finished two years ago we took out all of the incandescent light bulbs and put CFLs in their place, both dimmable where we have dimmer switches and nondimmable where we don't. Over time, we've replaced most of the other bulbs in our house as well. The light is fine, bright enough and we get used to the color, but the life of the CFLs is no where near what's advertized. We've had to replace a number of them in under a year. When you consider the difference in price, it's probably more economically efficient for us to use incandescent bulbs based on lifespan of the CFLs.


I'm not sure about the energy consumption as the price of electricity fluctuates too much to really tell, but I do think they are more efficient than incandescent bulbs.

I can't wait for better, cheaper LEDs to come onto the market. I'll replace all of the CFLs.

 

^^^Like Rob, I have replaced quite a few of the incandescent bulbs with CFL's, and have been extremely disappointed. Even though they use about 25% less power as an incandescent, I think given their cost vs. an incandescent, I would have been better off financially not using them. Of course, YMMV.