Of course we’ve all heard of and used LED lighting — as string lights over the holidays, and perhaps a somewhat expensive replacement bulb for an existing fixture. During our current rehab, we needed to replace ceiling fixtures and selected ones that highlighted the uniqueness of LED lighting. This meant the fixture wouldn’t have any screw-on replacement bulbs. 

For the eat-in kitchen, we selected a track lighting fixture with 6 lamps. Together, 6 lamps together would consume about 40 Watts. The flexible track allowed for more variety in positioning the lamps and by the time we’d installed 3 of the lamps, we felt the room to be bright enough! We settled on 5 lamps.

The average rated life of these lamps? About 50,000 hours. This means we could use them for about 4 hours a day for over 40 years. It’s hard to grasp that there are no bulbs to replace — not quarterly like with incandescent bulbs, not every 5 years like with compact fluorescent bulbs, but 40 years!

Sadly, these lamps are planned for obsolescence after that, but I’m sure the next person living in this space may have their own ideas for lighting up the dining area. And the mostly-metal components mean this fixture could be recycled at end of life. 

For a hallway, we selected this ceiling fixture. Again, to showcase LEDs and the no-need-to-change-bulbs feature.