![]() (The manufacturer’s website should have that information.) Don’t know what dimmer you already have? You could buy a dim-to-warm LED and try it out. One caveat: Some LEDs work only with certain kinds of dimmers. So check for the word "dimmable" on the label, and shop for what’s called "dim-to-warm," which indicates an LED made to emulate that incandescent yellow-orange candlelight-type glow. Unlike incandescents, which naturally emit a warm, amber light when lowered, LEDs "can look both kind of gray and also bluer," McGowan says. Higher CRI bulbs may cost a little more because they require more complex technology to reach those higher levels of accuracy.įinally, decide whether you want dimmable bulbs. Not all LED packages note the bulb’s CRI number, McGowan says, so you may have to search for the product online to get that information. "Go with 90 or 95 CRI if you can find it," says Marty Schmidt, the brand director for System 7, a Boston-based home lighting company. Better LEDs have what’s called a higher Color Rendering Index (CRI), indicated on a scale from 1 to 100, which measures how accurately a bulb illuminates. "Bright in the day and dim at night is what matters most," she says, which is why programmable tunable white lights can be handy.Īnother thing to know: Some LEDs can make colors look "off." McGowan explains that lower-quality LEDs can make everything in a room look flat, so vibrant colors appear much duller than they actually are. Jennifer Brons, the program director at Mount Sinai Hospital’s Light and Health Research Center outside of Albany, N.Y., says that having lighting on a consistent daily pattern is crucial for consistent sleep. You can even automate smart bulbs to change hue throughout the day, emulating the sun. So-called tunable white smart bulbs pair to a phone-based app or other systems so that you can adjust the hue between the cooler white that’s ideal for daytime task lighting and a cozier one for evenings. If you want to get a little more advanced, smart technology lets you change the appearance of your lighting at will. The Kelvin scale should be consistent across products and brands. For a warm incandescent look, go with 2,700 or 3,000 Kelvin, McGowan says-and ignore labels like "warm white" and "soft white." "Those terms are descriptive, but manufacturers may have different definitions of them," he says. ![]() Lighting hue is graded by the Kelvin scale-the lower the Kelvin number, the warmer the lighting will appear-and LED labels (like the one shown above) display this scale. Here’s where you’ll find important information about the brightness and quality of light the bulb produces. But if you want attractive lighting with the familiar look of incandescent bulbs, you’ll need to shop in a slightly different way. That means a 60-watt incandescent can be replaced by an LED that uses less than 10 watts, which is great for your electric bill. These throw off almost no heat: About 90 percent of their energy gets converted to light. Your flat-screen TV consists of thousands of mini LEDs. The guts of an LED bulb are more akin to a grouping of tiny electronic semiconductors illuminated by the movement of electrons across their surface. In fact, nearly 90 percent of its energy is wasted as heat, not light. Exposure to electric current makes it glow, creating light. Think of incandescent technology this way: When you put a piece of metal into a bonfire, the fire makes it glow-and the filament inside an incandescent bulb does much the same thing. The key difference between the incandescent bulb Thomas Edison invented in the late 1800s and today’s LED bulb is how each converts energy into light.
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