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ON BEATING FLICKER AND BUZZ
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I had tried just about every LED bulb available online
for my 1910 dining-room shower fixture—but none, not even the filament-style Edison bulbs, looked soft and inviting when dimmed.
When fully illuminated, the bulbs produced glare. Bulbs with the same color temperature—the socalled “warm” 2700 Kelvin—looked blue or grey when lit. Worse, they weren’t the same color of blue or grey, something quite noticeable in a multi-lamp shower fixture with glass shades. Some bulbs buzzed when dimmed. Replacing the bulb that buzzed often meant that the new bulb flickered while the others didn’t.
Fed up, I headed to my local hardware store to search for 2200 Kelvin LEDs, the “warmest” available. No luck. I kvetched about the problem to Mike, the guy behind the counter.
He asked me if I wanted lights that were warm when dimmed. I said yes. He paused briefly to see if anyone else was in view, then reached under the counter and handed me a set of four light bulbs he was certain I would like.
They were incandescents.
Mike probably treated the bulbs like contraband because in some states and municipalities they are. Depending on where you live, incandescent bulbs are banned or sales are restricted. (Same goes for some types of fluorescent lighting, and halogen lights are being phased out as well.) In some cases, electricians are required by law to install only LED lighting in new construction, which includes additions to older houses.
Smart, wifi-enabled LED bulbs that shift color; dimmable LEDs that mimic the effect of an incandescent; an integrated LED light source that’s part of the fixture itself (including some period reproductions); Edison-style LED bulbs: these are some of the recent innovations in home lighting.
No one questions that LEDs have lifespans measured in years rather than hours, and use far less energy and are much less expensive long-term than older forms of lighting. But the knock on LEDs is that the color cast by the bulb doesn’t soften and mellow at lower levels of illumination. “If you look at an incandescent bulb, it gets warmer and redder in color when it’s dimmed,” says Craig Richard of Old California Lighting. “LEDs don’t change color like that.”
One problem is that earlier versions of LEDs did not offer a full-spectrum light source. Most manufacturers now offer lights that score high on something called the Color Rendering Index (CRI), which measures how accurately the light source reproduces colors as they would appear in natural or incandescent light. The higher the CRI value (80 or above), the more pleasant the lighting.
Other bulb manufacturers have responded by offering “smart” wifi-enabled LEDs that shift color to mimic the change of natural light during the day. These tunable bulbs work with voice-activation apps, including Alexa, Google Home, Siri, and Echo, although as yet no one bulb works with every voice-activation system. Perhaps the biggest news, however, is “dim to warm” technology.
Philips recently introduced the Warm Glow, a dimmable A19 LED that screws in just like an incandescent bulb. The 800-lumens/60-watt equivalent bulb “works with more dimmer switches than any other LED on the market,” meaning it may or may not work with yours. What’s significant is that as the bulb dims, the light diminishes from 2700 Kelvin to 2200 Kelvin, arguably the same effect as dimming a regular incandescent bulb to candle glow. Early reviews are generally good. When dimmed, “many LED bulbs just get darker, which has a very cold effect,” writes Adam T.S., a reviewer at amazon.com. “These bulbs get warmer as the lights dim.”
That’s just bulbs that screw into existing fixtures. It’s now possible to buy vintage-look fixtures with integrated LEDs, where the light source is part of the fixture itself. Barn Light Electric, for example, offers integrated LED lamping as an option through a built-in module on most fixtures with shades 12" wide or more. “There’s no bulb to change out,” says Paige Perigo, retail customer-care supervisor for the company.
In color temperatures that range from roughly 2000 to 5000 Kelvin, LED bulbs come in all shapes and sizes. The lower the number, the warmer the light, and vice versa. While bright, cool light up to 5000 Kelvin is desirable in commercial spaces where plenty of light is essential, household lighting is typically 2700 to 3500 Kelvin, according to the Retrofit Companies, a lighting design specialist. “We don’t want a residential customer going over 3000 Kelvin,” says Barn Light Electric’s Paige Perigo. That’s because bright, cool light on the blue side of the spectrum can not only feel uncomfortable, but also may disrupt circadian rhythms, interfering with sleep. Lumens matter, too: To get the right combination of soft illumination in an interior fixture, she recommends no more than 850 lumens.
That’s the energy-sipping equivalent to a 60-watt bulb.