LEDs or: How to Save More Than $10,000 With One Choice

When we first bought our house, I asked my brother whether it made sense for us to immediately replace all of the incandescent bulbs in the house with LEDs. He knows stuff. His response: “Yes. It always makes sense to do that.” So naturally, I was curious and, since I like to learn stuff, did some digging to figure out why. I already knew that LEDs were super efficient and ended up saving lots of money over time; however, what I discovered about how much better they were shocked me.

LED bulbs, or light emitting diodes, are amazing products. They are one of those technologies that provide hope for what technological innovation can do for humankind. Over the last 20 years, they have quickly supplanted a technology that had reigned supreme for more than a century.* According to a statement by the head of the National Resources Defense Council, LEDs “save customers around $2.5 billion per year on their utility bills and prevent about 50 million tons of carbon pollution by 2030.”¹ LEDs achieve this savings by providing the same light output as incandescent bulbs using around 85% less electricity. 

Efficiency = Money

If you have a ton of incandescent bulbs lying around that you’re working your way through rather than switching to LEDs: you’re doing it wrong. Check out the following chart to see how wrong you’re doing it. Let’s imagine you could buy 60w incandescent bulbs for only $0.01, for the sake of argument.

	LED (60w equivalent)	Incandescent (60w)
Life Span per bulb	>10,000 hrs	1,000 hrs
Energy Usage	9w	60w
Energy Usage (20 yrs @ 6 hrs/day)	394.2 kw	2,628 kw
Cost of 20 yr energy use ($.119/kw)	$46.91	$312.73
Total bulbs required over 20 yrs	4	32
Cost per bulb	$1.24	$0.01
Total cost of energy and bulbs for 20 years of use	$51.87	$313.05

Even if you essentially don’t take the cost of new bulbs into account, it still makes no sense to keep and use them. Just look at the shocking total cost of 20 years of incandescent energy use: $312.73. PER BULB. The differences when taking into account electricity costs are astounding.

I replaced 52 incandescent bulbs when we moved into our new house this past year for about $175. Can you imagine that those 52 incandescent light bulbs would have cost me more than $16,000 over 20 years? By comparison, the $2,700 I’ll pay for using LEDs is certainly well worth it. 🙂 How could anyone not afford to make the switch to LEDs immediately when faced with this data?

What To Look For

Maybe those that purchased LEDs during their transition period were unhappy with their lights for one reason or another. The key here is that you need to buy the right bulb for the right application.

Things to know when buying LED bulbs:

• Color Temperature: This is the difference between soft white (2700K-3000K), bright/cool white (3500K-4100K), and daylight (5000K-6500K). The higher degrees Kelvin, the whiter the color temperature. Soft white is best for living rooms, dining rooms, and bedrooms. Bright/cool white is best for bathrooms, kitchens, or security lights. Daylight is best for offices, reading areas, and workspaces. I would almost universally argue against daylight bulbs because I personally hate them with a fiery passion.
• Dimmable vs Non-dimmable: Will you be using this bulb in conjunction with a dimmer switch? If so, get a dimmable bulb. 
• Enclosed Fixtures Rating: Some bulbs are rated for use in enclosed fixtures. This is a relatively new rating criteria, since it was mostly verboten to use LEDs in enclosed fixtures before because it would affect the bulb life. Better heat management in these bulbs allows them to be used without issue in enclosed fixtures like sconces, ceiling lights, bathroom vanity lights, outdoor lighting, etc.
• Lumen Output: This rates the amount of light your bulb will put out. Higher lumens means more light, lower lumens means less. Most LEDs provide equivalency to old-timey bulbs right on their packaging (e.g., 9w LED would list “60w equivalent”).
• Dampness Rating: Some bulbs are made to withstand higher levels of humidity than others. This is especially true of recessed light fixtures, which are either rated for damp locations or not. This is most important when deciding whether a bulb or fixture can be used outdoors or in bathrooms, for the most part.
• Color Rendering Index (CRI): The one area that LEDs lag their incandescent counterparts is mostly indistinguishable unless you’re trained to look for it. Measured out of 100, a bulb’s CRI indicates how true the light reveals colors when compared to daylight or an incandescent. This would be especially important if you are an artist and want your studio to be provided a perfect color spectrum for viewing or creating your work. It would make sense to pay more for a bulb with a higher CRI in a circumstance like this, I would imagine.

Final Thoughts

Hopefully I’ve provided a good primer on why LEDs are amazing little pieces of technology for us humans to use. The bottom line is that incandescents should be immediately replaced with LEDs. Just ensure you buy the right bulb. Your wallet will be happy you did.

---

*I’m hopeful that is what Electric Cars and many renewable energy sources will do, too. 🙂

---

1. NRDC Press Release, 20 May 2021, “DOE Takes Steps on Overdue Efficiency Standards for Light Bulbs,” https://www.nrdc.org/media/2021/210520-0