3 ms·

I've never had LED lights last anywhere near the purported 5-7 year timeframe. The worst ones are the small decorative ones with the tinier screw part that my h

I've never had LED lights last anywhere near the purported 5-7 year timeframe. The worst ones are the small decorative ones with the tinier screw part that my house seems to have an inordinate number of. Those last maybe 6 months and then they start getting dimmer and then all the lights in the circuit get worse at once. I like LED lights immensely but the idea they last even 2 years is a lie in my opinion.

pier25 2mo ago
Some of the first LED bulbs we bought are still running after more than 10 years. I don't remember the brand but they were expensive at the time.
convolvatron 2mo ago
I've run 30w led modules for 10+ years by - using real power conversion components, making sure they have sufficient cooling and running them at 75% of their rated current. they still seem plenty bright.
ValentineC 2mo ago
Randomly, my Philips Hue E27 bulbs last far longer than any of the China Zigbee clones I've bought, but like all mass produced goods, there are outliers that fail. The cheap China stuff tend to fail in a few months, while I've only had two Hue bulbs in my collection fail ever, so Philips seems to be doing something right.
- Hilliard_Ohiooo 2mo ago
  I agree, my Philips hue bulbs have been going strong for about 7 to 8 years now I'm not a single issue. I think people are just buying cheap bulbs then getting upset that they bought cheap bulbs.
  - Marsymars 2mo ago
    It's a bit tricky to determine what exactly is "cheap" though. I've got various Philips Hue bulbs/strips with no failures at 20k+ hours. OTOH I've got a few Philips Ultra Definition bulbs over my kitchen island which seem to fail at an average of 10k or so hours. None of the other bulbs in my house are really on long enough to say much about failures... like I've got dozens of recessed LEDs without any failures over 5 years, but I doubt any of them are over 1-2k hours.
  - basisword 2mo ago
    >> I think people are just buying cheap bulbs then getting upset that they bought cheap bulbs. What is a 'cheap' bulb though? We paid a few bucks for a bulb for generations. Suddenly we're paying 10x that for a Phillips Hue and anything lesser is 'cheap'.
addaon 2mo ago
Every Philips L-Prize bulb I bought in 2012 is still working. Some have been on about 30% of the time since purchase. A few have been dropped multiple meters onto concrete; oops. Well made LED bulbs last. Cost-optimized ones may not.
- freediddy 2mo ago
  I had a bunch of Philips Hue LED light bulbs until they started dying within a couple of years or less and the replacement costs were ridiculous. That's when I switched to Lutron Casetas.
  - addaon 2mo ago
    I run about 50 Philips Hue lights and I’ve replaced 3 in six years, so definitely not as reliable as the L-Prize lights, but not awful. The L-Prize bulbs are built like tanks… when you drop one you check the floor for damage before the bulb.
    - Shadowmist 2mo ago
      Exact same numbers for me! 3 bulbs stopped shutting off completely. When I would turn them off they would stay around 5% brightness.
- sam1714 2mo ago
  My OG gray Philips lasted more than a decade constantly on. It was still working at the end but I noticed the yellow remote phosphor plastic panels were disintegrating with a web of cracks. Underneath, the plastic surrounding the LEDs had turned brown: the polymers had photodegraded.
Hilliard_Ohiooo 2mo ago
I bought all new Philip hue bulbs going on 7 or 8 years ago now and not a single one has gone bad. Maybe you're just buying cheap poor quality bulbs? A 100 out of 100 success rate after 8 years.
- freediddy 2mo ago
  No, I started with Philips Hues but then gave up and migrated to Cree light bulbs with Lutron Casetas because the Hues kept dying. These are over 2 different houses as well. I wonder what is going on if it's just me
  - Krutonium 2mo ago
    Yeah that is very weird. Personally I even have some LED lights that are going on 15 years old, spent a bit more than I'd like on them at the time, but they were on sale!
  - sam1714 2mo ago
    Had a ton of issues with the original Cree bulbs. They underglued the glass bulb and it came off with thermal cycling. They also put the LEDs on a metal core PCB they bent into ~10-gon tower. On the bends, the traces apparently would crack which led to overheating and a burn spot. Cree is now no more; the bulbs are just a brand for FEIT who imports the same unreliable Chinese white-label bulbs.
    - freediddy 2mo ago
      Which brand do you suggest?
      - sam1714 2mo ago
        Philips Hue. I've had issues with color ones, the White + Ambience ones are fine. (Makes sense as they omit the color section) Hue is basically the only bulbs not being sourced from the same couple of white label manufacturers. Philips/Signify's rapidly shrinking line of dumb bulbs are being sourced from there too. Never buy filament style bulbs. They are universally unreliable because of poor thermals with the emitters.
craftkiller 2mo ago
I have never had an LED light bulb fail. I'm still using the same 6-pack I bought over a decade ago, bringing them with me from apartment to apartment. I only have 5 remaining because the glue that holds the glass bulb onto the base eventually failed on one and I couldn't be bothered to figure out what the correct adhesive would be for lightbulbs.
- somat 2mo ago
  Fair enough but they don't get hot, nearly any glue would work, Being plastic, I would use CA(superglue). After failure I like to do a postmortem teardown, it has never been the LED proper, usually it is the capacitor in a capacitance power supply, otherwise the controller IC.
  - craftkiller 2mo ago
    Good to know, because another one of the bulbs visibly looks on the verge of separation. Thanks!
- IrishTechie 2mo ago
  I moved into a house with an obscene number of GU10 LED downlighters. The bulbs were all mid market (I think) brands like Energizer etc. I’d guess they’re coming up to 7-8 years old and I have now had to replace most of them, probably 30-40 bulbs from a couple of manufacturers that all just started to fail over about 12 months. I also have quite a few Philips Hue bulbs, I’ve had 1 fail out of 20-30 and I think that was not the LED itself but some control board. Some are going on 10 years old.
xnx 2mo ago
Enclosed fixtures can kill some LED bulbs quickly if they can't dissipate heat.
- foobarchu 2mo ago
  I would say most LED bulbs. You need ones specifically rated for enclosures, which are way less common, and most people have the wrong idea of what counts as enclosed (the glass hood around your kitchen chandelier bulbs is an enclosure, as are ceiling cans)
  - jerlam 2mo ago
    I was killing a lot of LEDs in recessed cans. I replaced them with integrated retrofits, which aren't designed around a bulb shape that fries its own electronics, and aren't made as cheaply as possible. Here's a nice dim-to-warm recessed: https://www.homedepot.com/p/HALO-RL56-Series-5-6-in-Recessed-LED-retrofit-module-Adjustable-CCT-and-Lumens-Integrated-LED-Matte-White-RL56LS9FSD2W1EWH/324803704 https://www.homedepot.com/p/HALO-RL56-Series-5-6-in-Recessed...
- pmontra 2mo ago
  Yes, cooling is important. I don't have a passion for lamps so after 5 years in a new house most of my LED bulbs are still hanging from the ceiling and walls, I can't remember any failure. I had an IKEA lamp with a pretty tight fitting for the bulb and it killed LEDs after a few months. I reverted putting a fluorescent bulb inside it. No failure.
usefulcat 2mo ago
I had an LED porch light that lasted ~10 years. The fixture had light and motion sensors, so it wasn't on during the day or all night, and often it was not running at full brightness, but still it was on a lot. I was surprised it lasted that long, especially since it was outdoors. I switched to all LED lighting many years ago. I've had a few that lasted less than a year, but by and large I'd say that nearly all the lights I've had have lasted at least on the order of years.
watwut 2mo ago
That is weird. Mine are basically infinite.
tzs 2mo ago
In mid 2016 I replaced around 25-30 incandescent bulbs (7 x 100 W, a couple or so 40 W, and the rest 60 W) with Walmart Great Value non-dimmable LEDs. Basically every incandescent bulb I could find around the house that was not on a dimmer and was A19 shape with an E26 base (except I forgot the attic and crawlspace). There was some sort of deal between Walmart and Puget Sound Energy that applied an instant rebate automatically so that they simply rang up on checkout for $0.17. They are all still working fine.
lovich 2mo ago
We have several hundred smart led lights from I want to say Lutron? In my home going on year 6 soon and we’ve had to replace only 3-4 so far. 3 of those replacements were on the same circuit as well so I question if the circuit isn’t at fault. Plural of anecdote isn’t data and all that but I think the several hundred quantity adds some weight. Also about 90 of those are in outdoor lamps so there’s a good amount dealing with weather and we’ve not had to replace any of those yet.
mort96 2mo ago
Do you keep your light on constantly? I used to have a lamp that I kept replacing bulbs for "all the time". I didn't understand why since the light bulbs claimed to last for years and years. One day I read the light bulb package more closely, and it said something along the lines of, "7 years life span at 2 hours per day" in small text (the numbers may be wrong, going by memory). Doing the math, the number of active hours claimed on the box turned out to be roughly true. I don't know if LED bulb packages play similar tricks but it's worth checking out.
- fn-mote 2mo ago
  > I don't know if LED bulb packages play similar tricks but it's worth checking out. It's perfectly logical that lifetime should be measured in hours of service, not days of existence. People don't know how to translate 7500 hours of service into a real duration, though. Hence the years.
  - mort96 2mo ago
    I would expect 7500 to translate into 0.85 years though, not 7.
quickthrowman 2mo ago
If you are installing LED lamps into enclosed fixtures you need to use LED lamps rated for enclosed fixtures or they will die an early death. A globe around a lamp with an open bottom and a recessed can are both enclosed, even though you can see the lamp. Heat rises. Similarly, you can’t install recessed cans into a ceiling that is insulated without them being IC rated or they will die an early death. Spend a few dollars more per lamps for quality ones. Philips makes decent LED lamps, I’m fond of their 2200-2700K dimmable lamps that lower the color temp as they dim. Philips makes an E12 base BA11 shape (candelabra) lamp that should fit your needs. I buy Keystone lamps LED T8 lamps almost exclusively, but those are pretty uncommon in homes. Commercial LED fixtures are rated for 50,000 hours typically but they have a separate LED driver and massive heatsinks to provide that sort of lifespan.
wjnc 2mo ago
In the category of private victories without any economic use (any hobby costs you something): I store boxes for LED lights with receipts. Write on the box where you put the light and chug it in the garage. I have not failed to get a new one for free at our local home depot equivalent after 3 to 4 years. It doesn’t help the store that the boxes used to state how many years they would last. I agree that even Osram doesn’t meet the hours or years, Philips doesn’t by a long way.
semerda 2mo ago
Ditto. They barely last 12 mos. This goes for both types: LED Light Chips (Strips) and LED String Lights from various manufacturers.
nxpnsv 2mo ago
My n=1 study: I built my living room lights about 8 years ago and have had to swap 1/20 lamps since. Perhaps try a better manufacturer?
duskdozer 2mo ago
I guess if people are nerding out on lights in this subthread, maybe someone can recommend me a type or source for low-K (say, 2200K or something thereabout) bulbs with good CRI (yes, I know, but I can still notice a big difference at 2700. I don't know how low it will matter to me, but I want to see)
- anonymous_user9 2mo ago
  I've been using one of these 1700K bulbs [1] for a few years, and it produces a pleasant light. They also have a 2400K model [2]. [1] https://store.waveformlighting.com/products/superwarm-1700k-flicker-free-a19-10w-led-bulb https://store.waveformlighting.com/products/superwarm-1700k-... [2] https://store.waveformlighting.com/products/lux24-circadian-led-bulb-2400k-95-cri-e26-a19-led-filament-bulb https://store.waveformlighting.com/products/lux24-circadian-...
tialaramex 2mo ago
Because LED lighting is electronics it hates heat, unlike an incandescent lamp. So the most common cause of shorter lifetimes is that the LED can't discard enough heat to the environment and begins to overheat. Small (or absent) heatsinks, installation which (perhaps for aesthetic reasons) puts the lighting where warm air can't escape and of course just putting the lighting directly in concentrated sunlight will make this worse. I have a room which is lit for like 10-20 hours per day and so it clocks up hours very quickly and my LED lamps are guaranteed for 2 years so I figured surely the guarantee would trigger but nope, I began keeping receipts and turns out that I only need to replace one every 3-5 years it must just feel frequent because it's annoying, I just dug out the most recent receipt and it's from 2021. I will continue keeping the receipts to feel better about the annoyance.
cameronh90 2mo ago
I’ve never had a Hue bulb fail in about a decade of using them in every fitting.
maccard 2mo ago
I've lived in my current home for 5 years with LED lighting, and we have hardly changed any lightbulbs in the house. I've got no idea how old those bulbs are. I lived in my previous place for 7 years and changed a handful of bulbs. Can't say my experience matches at all!
benj111 2mo ago
I owned my last house for 12 years, I replaced 1 bulb? Half the bulbs were carried over from a previous house, so some are ~14 years old. Admittedly these were early ones, so the original batch had metal bodies etc. the replacement was a Phillips one. This is in the UK though, with pendant fittings, so less heat issues.
basisword 2mo ago
This sounds like you have electrical issues. I've lived in a couple of apartments before where bulbs would go all the time. Outside of that I've been using the same Phillips Hue bulbs for going on 8 years without any issue.
aetherspawn 2mo ago
Yeah my parents had the type with the external driver box from Bunnings, and they died every 6 months or so. Those were DIY with a little pigtail plug. They were awful. I genuinely believed that LED lights were crap. In our new house the sparky put in a proper Chinese brand from the commercial sparky store I guess, no external box, dimmable, 4 adjustable hues with a toggle switch. They were like $10 each. Been 7 years no failures. We have some really expensive ATOM ones above the shower (IP68) and outside around the perimeter. Those were around $75 each, but are the same age as well, no issues.
rob74 2mo ago
Hm... race to the bottom? We bought our current apartment (built in the 1980s) 12 years ago, and I have switched to LED lighting everywhere from the beginning. Main learning: old relays and/or dimmers seem to generate voltage spikes that are fine for old lightbulbs, but kill LED lamps in a matter of months, so that it looks like the lamps themselves might be the cause. After I replaced those, no more problems - most of the LED lamps from the beginning (except for those connected to old relays and dimmers) are still with us! I also tend towards brand name LED lights (Philips & co), which might be a bit more expensive, but have (I hope) better quality checks.
- ido 2mo ago
  The following anecdote doesn’t contradict what you wrote but maybe you’ll find it interesting- I worked for a daughter company of Phillips in the 00s (as an embedded programmer). I was working on mp3 players and set-top boxes but my boss has been with Phillips for decades at the time. He told me how the CD players (the ones you’d connect to speakers at home, not the portable ones) had a variety of brands, from budget to premium. But the only differences were in the external materials & the quality of the disc tray - as those are differences people notice. But everything else (and thus the audio quality) was identical.
blincoln 2mo ago
> Those last maybe 6 months and then they start getting dimmer and then all the lights in the circuit get worse at once. Have you checked the wiring? I may be stating the obvious, but in household electrical wiring every fixture or receptacle is connected to its circuit in parallel. I can't think of a way for one bulb on a correctly-wired circuit to fail in a way that causes other bulbs to dim, unless the failed bulb is essentially shorting out the circuit but not causing the breaker to trip for some reason. If you know why it's behaving that way, I'd love to know too. I've never seen anything like that.
herbst 2mo ago
I bought a bunch of bulps when I moved to my house about 7 years ago. Some are on like 90% of the time since. I haven't had a single one go bad so far. Cheap WiZ bulps
roomey 2mo ago
I had that dimming issue in my house... And got the gas boiler serviced cause it had a problem with the ignitor, and all the dimming stopped. Now the house is ancient, so I'm guessing there was some sort of short happening that was causing this.
phendrenad2 2mo ago
Counterpoint: I've never had an LED bulb go bad. Ever. I think it's highly dependent on the brand.
Peanuts99 2mo ago
You might have poor quality incoming AC. Capacitors in the power supplies will be under more stress if you regularly have over/under voltages or small spikes and surges.
inglor_cz 2mo ago
We moved into a new house in November 2022 and bought all lights anew. LEDs all around, some 25 devices taken all together. 44 months later, all of them are still working.
audunw 2mo ago
Only bulbs I’ve had fail in the last 10 year was some IKEA GU10 bulbs (maybe 2-3 years). I got them replaced for free with no receipt, and the new design had obvious improvements to managing thermals. It shows that, yeah, bad designs can fail early. But if you buy from a reputable company, it is likely to be fixed.

pier25 2mo ago

Some of the first LED bulbs we bought are still running after more than 10 years. I don't remember the brand but they were expensive at the time.

convolvatron 2mo ago

I've run 30w led modules for 10+ years by - using real power conversion components, making sure they have sufficient cooling and running them at 75% of their rated current. they still seem plenty bright.

ValentineC 2mo ago

Randomly, my Philips Hue E27 bulbs last far longer than any of the China Zigbee clones I've bought, but like all mass produced goods, there are outliers that fail. The cheap China stuff tend to fail in a few months, while I've only had two Hue bulbs in my collection fail ever, so Philips seems to be doing something right.

Hilliard_Ohiooo 2mo ago
I agree, my Philips hue bulbs have been going strong for about 7 to 8 years now I'm not a single issue. I think people are just buying cheap bulbs then getting upset that they bought cheap bulbs.
- Marsymars 2mo ago
  It's a bit tricky to determine what exactly is "cheap" though. I've got various Philips Hue bulbs/strips with no failures at 20k+ hours. OTOH I've got a few Philips Ultra Definition bulbs over my kitchen island which seem to fail at an average of 10k or so hours. None of the other bulbs in my house are really on long enough to say much about failures... like I've got dozens of recessed LEDs without any failures over 5 years, but I doubt any of them are over 1-2k hours.
- basisword 2mo ago
  >> I think people are just buying cheap bulbs then getting upset that they bought cheap bulbs. What is a 'cheap' bulb though? We paid a few bucks for a bulb for generations. Suddenly we're paying 10x that for a Phillips Hue and anything lesser is 'cheap'.

addaon 2mo ago

Every Philips L-Prize bulb I bought in 2012 is still working. Some have been on about 30% of the time since purchase. A few have been dropped multiple meters onto concrete; oops. Well made LED bulbs last. Cost-optimized ones may not.

freediddy 2mo ago
I had a bunch of Philips Hue LED light bulbs until they started dying within a couple of years or less and the replacement costs were ridiculous. That's when I switched to Lutron Casetas.
- addaon 2mo ago
  I run about 50 Philips Hue lights and I’ve replaced 3 in six years, so definitely not as reliable as the L-Prize lights, but not awful. The L-Prize bulbs are built like tanks… when you drop one you check the floor for damage before the bulb.
  - Shadowmist 2mo ago
    Exact same numbers for me! 3 bulbs stopped shutting off completely. When I would turn them off they would stay around 5% brightness.
sam1714 2mo ago
My OG gray Philips lasted more than a decade constantly on. It was still working at the end but I noticed the yellow remote phosphor plastic panels were disintegrating with a web of cracks. Underneath, the plastic surrounding the LEDs had turned brown: the polymers had photodegraded.

Hilliard_Ohiooo 2mo ago

I bought all new Philip hue bulbs going on 7 or 8 years ago now and not a single one has gone bad. Maybe you're just buying cheap poor quality bulbs? A 100 out of 100 success rate after 8 years.

freediddy 2mo ago
No, I started with Philips Hues but then gave up and migrated to Cree light bulbs with Lutron Casetas because the Hues kept dying. These are over 2 different houses as well. I wonder what is going on if it's just me
- Krutonium 2mo ago
  Yeah that is very weird. Personally I even have some LED lights that are going on 15 years old, spent a bit more than I'd like on them at the time, but they were on sale!
- sam1714 2mo ago
  Had a ton of issues with the original Cree bulbs. They underglued the glass bulb and it came off with thermal cycling. They also put the LEDs on a metal core PCB they bent into ~10-gon tower. On the bends, the traces apparently would crack which led to overheating and a burn spot. Cree is now no more; the bulbs are just a brand for FEIT who imports the same unreliable Chinese white-label bulbs.
  - freediddy 2mo ago
    Which brand do you suggest?
    - sam1714 2mo ago
      Philips Hue. I've had issues with color ones, the White + Ambience ones are fine. (Makes sense as they omit the color section) Hue is basically the only bulbs not being sourced from the same couple of white label manufacturers. Philips/Signify's rapidly shrinking line of dumb bulbs are being sourced from there too. Never buy filament style bulbs. They are universally unreliable because of poor thermals with the emitters.

craftkiller 2mo ago

I have never had an LED light bulb fail. I'm still using the same 6-pack I bought over a decade ago, bringing them with me from apartment to apartment. I only have 5 remaining because the glue that holds the glass bulb onto the base eventually failed on one and I couldn't be bothered to figure out what the correct adhesive would be for lightbulbs.

somat 2mo ago
Fair enough but they don't get hot, nearly any glue would work, Being plastic, I would use CA(superglue). After failure I like to do a postmortem teardown, it has never been the LED proper, usually it is the capacitor in a capacitance power supply, otherwise the controller IC.
- craftkiller 2mo ago
  Good to know, because another one of the bulbs visibly looks on the verge of separation. Thanks!
IrishTechie 2mo ago
I moved into a house with an obscene number of GU10 LED downlighters. The bulbs were all mid market (I think) brands like Energizer etc. I’d guess they’re coming up to 7-8 years old and I have now had to replace most of them, probably 30-40 bulbs from a couple of manufacturers that all just started to fail over about 12 months. I also have quite a few Philips Hue bulbs, I’ve had 1 fail out of 20-30 and I think that was not the LED itself but some control board. Some are going on 10 years old.

xnx 2mo ago

Enclosed fixtures can kill some LED bulbs quickly if they can't dissipate heat.

foobarchu 2mo ago
I would say most LED bulbs. You need ones specifically rated for enclosures, which are way less common, and most people have the wrong idea of what counts as enclosed (the glass hood around your kitchen chandelier bulbs is an enclosure, as are ceiling cans)
- jerlam 2mo ago
  I was killing a lot of LEDs in recessed cans. I replaced them with integrated retrofits, which aren't designed around a bulb shape that fries its own electronics, and aren't made as cheaply as possible. Here's a nice dim-to-warm recessed: https://www.homedepot.com/p/HALO-RL56-Series-5-6-in-Recessed-LED-retrofit-module-Adjustable-CCT-and-Lumens-Integrated-LED-Matte-White-RL56LS9FSD2W1EWH/324803704 https://www.homedepot.com/p/HALO-RL56-Series-5-6-in-Recessed...
pmontra 2mo ago
Yes, cooling is important. I don't have a passion for lamps so after 5 years in a new house most of my LED bulbs are still hanging from the ceiling and walls, I can't remember any failure. I had an IKEA lamp with a pretty tight fitting for the bulb and it killed LEDs after a few months. I reverted putting a fluorescent bulb inside it. No failure.

usefulcat 2mo ago

I had an LED porch light that lasted ~10 years. The fixture had light and motion sensors, so it wasn't on during the day or all night, and often it was not running at full brightness, but still it was on a lot. I was surprised it lasted that long, especially since it was outdoors. I switched to all LED lighting many years ago. I've had a few that lasted less than a year, but by and large I'd say that nearly all the lights I've had have lasted at least on the order of years.

watwut 2mo ago

That is weird. Mine are basically infinite.

tzs 2mo ago

In mid 2016 I replaced around 25-30 incandescent bulbs (7 x 100 W, a couple or so 40 W, and the rest 60 W) with Walmart Great Value non-dimmable LEDs. Basically every incandescent bulb I could find around the house that was not on a dimmer and was A19 shape with an E26 base (except I forgot the attic and crawlspace). There was some sort of deal between Walmart and Puget Sound Energy that applied an instant rebate automatically so that they simply rang up on checkout for $0.17. They are all still working fine.

lovich 2mo ago

We have several hundred smart led lights from I want to say Lutron? In my home going on year 6 soon and we’ve had to replace only 3-4 so far. 3 of those replacements were on the same circuit as well so I question if the circuit isn’t at fault. Plural of anecdote isn’t data and all that but I think the several hundred quantity adds some weight. Also about 90 of those are in outdoor lamps so there’s a good amount dealing with weather and we’ve not had to replace any of those yet.

mort96 2mo ago

Do you keep your light on constantly? I used to have a lamp that I kept replacing bulbs for "all the time". I didn't understand why since the light bulbs claimed to last for years and years. One day I read the light bulb package more closely, and it said something along the lines of, "7 years life span at 2 hours per day" in small text (the numbers may be wrong, going by memory). Doing the math, the number of active hours claimed on the box turned out to be roughly true. I don't know if LED bulb packages play similar tricks but it's worth checking out.

fn-mote 2mo ago
> I don't know if LED bulb packages play similar tricks but it's worth checking out. It's perfectly logical that lifetime should be measured in hours of service, not days of existence. People don't know how to translate 7500 hours of service into a real duration, though. Hence the years.
- mort96 2mo ago
  I would expect 7500 to translate into 0.85 years though, not 7.

quickthrowman 2mo ago

If you are installing LED lamps into enclosed fixtures you need to use LED lamps rated for enclosed fixtures or they will die an early death. A globe around a lamp with an open bottom and a recessed can are both enclosed, even though you can see the lamp. Heat rises. Similarly, you can’t install recessed cans into a ceiling that is insulated without them being IC rated or they will die an early death. Spend a few dollars more per lamps for quality ones. Philips makes decent LED lamps, I’m fond of their 2200-2700K dimmable lamps that lower the color temp as they dim. Philips makes an E12 base BA11 shape (candelabra) lamp that should fit your needs. I buy Keystone lamps LED T8 lamps almost exclusively, but those are pretty uncommon in homes. Commercial LED fixtures are rated for 50,000 hours typically but they have a separate LED driver and massive heatsinks to provide that sort of lifespan.

wjnc 2mo ago

In the category of private victories without any economic use (any hobby costs you something): I store boxes for LED lights with receipts. Write on the box where you put the light and chug it in the garage. I have not failed to get a new one for free at our local home depot equivalent after 3 to 4 years. It doesn’t help the store that the boxes used to state how many years they would last. I agree that even Osram doesn’t meet the hours or years, Philips doesn’t by a long way.

semerda 2mo ago

Ditto. They barely last 12 mos. This goes for both types: LED Light Chips (Strips) and LED String Lights from various manufacturers.

nxpnsv 2mo ago

My n=1 study: I built my living room lights about 8 years ago and have had to swap 1/20 lamps since. Perhaps try a better manufacturer?

duskdozer 2mo ago

I guess if people are nerding out on lights in this subthread, maybe someone can recommend me a type or source for low-K (say, 2200K or something thereabout) bulbs with good CRI (yes, I know, but I can still notice a big difference at 2700. I don't know how low it will matter to me, but I want to see)

anonymous_user9 2mo ago
I've been using one of these 1700K bulbs [1] for a few years, and it produces a pleasant light. They also have a 2400K model [2]. [1] https://store.waveformlighting.com/products/superwarm-1700k-flicker-free-a19-10w-led-bulb https://store.waveformlighting.com/products/superwarm-1700k-... [2] https://store.waveformlighting.com/products/lux24-circadian-led-bulb-2400k-95-cri-e26-a19-led-filament-bulb https://store.waveformlighting.com/products/lux24-circadian-...

tialaramex 2mo ago

Because LED lighting is electronics it hates heat, unlike an incandescent lamp. So the most common cause of shorter lifetimes is that the LED can't discard enough heat to the environment and begins to overheat. Small (or absent) heatsinks, installation which (perhaps for aesthetic reasons) puts the lighting where warm air can't escape and of course just putting the lighting directly in concentrated sunlight will make this worse. I have a room which is lit for like 10-20 hours per day and so it clocks up hours very quickly and my LED lamps are guaranteed for 2 years so I figured surely the guarantee would trigger but nope, I began keeping receipts and turns out that I only need to replace one every 3-5 years it must just feel frequent because it's annoying, I just dug out the most recent receipt and it's from 2021. I will continue keeping the receipts to feel better about the annoyance.

cameronh90 2mo ago

I’ve never had a Hue bulb fail in about a decade of using them in every fitting.

maccard 2mo ago

I've lived in my current home for 5 years with LED lighting, and we have hardly changed any lightbulbs in the house. I've got no idea how old those bulbs are. I lived in my previous place for 7 years and changed a handful of bulbs. Can't say my experience matches at all!

benj111 2mo ago

I owned my last house for 12 years, I replaced 1 bulb? Half the bulbs were carried over from a previous house, so some are ~14 years old. Admittedly these were early ones, so the original batch had metal bodies etc. the replacement was a Phillips one. This is in the UK though, with pendant fittings, so less heat issues.

basisword 2mo ago

This sounds like you have electrical issues. I've lived in a couple of apartments before where bulbs would go all the time. Outside of that I've been using the same Phillips Hue bulbs for going on 8 years without any issue.

aetherspawn 2mo ago

Yeah my parents had the type with the external driver box from Bunnings, and they died every 6 months or so. Those were DIY with a little pigtail plug. They were awful. I genuinely believed that LED lights were crap. In our new house the sparky put in a proper Chinese brand from the commercial sparky store I guess, no external box, dimmable, 4 adjustable hues with a toggle switch. They were like $10 each. Been 7 years no failures. We have some really expensive ATOM ones above the shower (IP68) and outside around the perimeter. Those were around $75 each, but are the same age as well, no issues.

rob74 2mo ago

Hm... race to the bottom? We bought our current apartment (built in the 1980s) 12 years ago, and I have switched to LED lighting everywhere from the beginning. Main learning: old relays and/or dimmers seem to generate voltage spikes that are fine for old lightbulbs, but kill LED lamps in a matter of months, so that it looks like the lamps themselves might be the cause. After I replaced those, no more problems - most of the LED lamps from the beginning (except for those connected to old relays and dimmers) are still with us! I also tend towards brand name LED lights (Philips & co), which might be a bit more expensive, but have (I hope) better quality checks.

ido 2mo ago
The following anecdote doesn’t contradict what you wrote but maybe you’ll find it interesting- I worked for a daughter company of Phillips in the 00s (as an embedded programmer). I was working on mp3 players and set-top boxes but my boss has been with Phillips for decades at the time. He told me how the CD players (the ones you’d connect to speakers at home, not the portable ones) had a variety of brands, from budget to premium. But the only differences were in the external materials & the quality of the disc tray - as those are differences people notice. But everything else (and thus the audio quality) was identical.

blincoln 2mo ago

> Those last maybe 6 months and then they start getting dimmer and then all the lights in the circuit get worse at once. Have you checked the wiring? I may be stating the obvious, but in household electrical wiring every fixture or receptacle is connected to its circuit in parallel. I can't think of a way for one bulb on a correctly-wired circuit to fail in a way that causes other bulbs to dim, unless the failed bulb is essentially shorting out the circuit but not causing the breaker to trip for some reason. If you know why it's behaving that way, I'd love to know too. I've never seen anything like that.

herbst 2mo ago

I bought a bunch of bulps when I moved to my house about 7 years ago. Some are on like 90% of the time since. I haven't had a single one go bad so far. Cheap WiZ bulps

roomey 2mo ago

I had that dimming issue in my house... And got the gas boiler serviced cause it had a problem with the ignitor, and all the dimming stopped. Now the house is ancient, so I'm guessing there was some sort of short happening that was causing this.

phendrenad2 2mo ago

Counterpoint: I've never had an LED bulb go bad. Ever. I think it's highly dependent on the brand.

Peanuts99 2mo ago

You might have poor quality incoming AC. Capacitors in the power supplies will be under more stress if you regularly have over/under voltages or small spikes and surges.

inglor_cz 2mo ago

We moved into a new house in November 2022 and bought all lights anew. LEDs all around, some 25 devices taken all together. 44 months later, all of them are still working.

audunw 2mo ago

Only bulbs I’ve had fail in the last 10 year was some IKEA GU10 bulbs (maybe 2-3 years). I got them replaced for free with no receipt, and the new design had obvious improvements to managing thermals. It shows that, yeah, bad designs can fail early. But if you buy from a reputable company, it is likely to be fixed.