Electrical Industry Articles and Stories

I’ll make no bones about it. LEDs are the light of my life. Okay, maybe that’s going just a bit far … but not much. If you want to find an incandescent or fluorescent lamp in my house, you’re going to have to look hard. I think I may have a few C7s left to replace. But only because they’re hard to get to.

Maintaining proper lighting levels, color temperature, and Color Rendering Index (CRI) is crucial for various applications. Color temperature affects the ambiance, while CRI determines color accuracy. LEDs offer flexibility in color temperature, have a high CRI, produce less heat, and are energy-efficient compared to incandescent lamps.

As someone who’s tracked LED lighting since its early days as a commercially available technology, my own experience with the products has evolved. I live in an older house with overhead lighting only in the kitchen and bathrooms, so this has mostly meant experimenting with LED bulbs (or “lamps,” in lighting designer lingo) in the 14 or 15 table fixtures scattered around my home.

It truly amazes me how LEDs have transformed the lighting industry in just a decade. In 2012, manufacturers introduced the first bulbs to match the output of a standard 60W incandescent. They weren’t dimmable and could cost $25 or more. Fast forward to 2023, and LEDs now dominate the lighting market, and inexpensive replacement lamps can cost less than $5 and last 10-20 years.

I was talking to my brother, Mark, on the phone last night. We’d been trying to connect all week and finally got the chance. I’m in Arkansas and he’s in Arizona, so the time difference can be a pain.

We just missed each other the day before because he was over with the neighbors across the street.