Are these lights LEDs or incandescent light bulbs?

LEDs or incandescents?

On holiday last week in the New Forest we had a nice lunch in the White Buck in Burley (highly recommended) with rather elegant lighting in the bar. Oh, that's a shame, I remarked to my beloved, they're still using incandescent lights - and then I realised they weren't. It isn't clear in my photo but each of the candle-shaped lamps in this candelabra actually contains 3 little LEDs.  Of course it isn't really necessary that energy saving light bulbs should look like old fashioned ones, but it certainly helps when you don't have to change the fittings and chandeliers at the same time as the bulbs.




I'm not sure exactly what these bulbs were but they might have been something like these 3W (equivalent to 40 W) warm white LED candle shape bulbs. There were 10 in each chandelier and there were at least four in the room. Using incandescents that would be 1.6 kW. With LEDs it comes to 0.12 kW. The lights were probably on at least 12 hours a day, through eight months of the year so each individual bulb (costing £5.99 from Amazon) would save the pub around £1.30/month and pay for itself in less than 5 months.

What about LEDs at home? You are unlikely to have the lights on so much of the time - say 3 hours per day - but you pay more for your electricity - probably 14p/kWh compared to 10p/kWh for the pub. So, a similar exchange of bulbs, 3W for 40W, would pay for itself in 13 months.

If you've been holding off converting to energy saving light bulbs because you don't like CFLs then maybe now is a good time to consider LEDs. (For a comparison of LEDs and CFLs see Should I buy LED  bulbs?)

Or, if you want to hang on a wee bit longer and you don't mind using a little extra power to get something that will totally fool your friends, Philips have just announced a new bulb with special optics to make the LEDs look just like an incandescent 40W bulb, and it is dimmable as well. It uses 6W rather than 3W and they expect it to cost €8.99 which is around £7.40.