Increasing the lifespan of a bulb makes it worse in every other way • Hacker News Board

Re: Increasing the lifespan of a bulb makes it worse in every other way

#41

Post by hagbard_c » Fri, Jul 31, 2026, 11:08 PM UTC

Hilliard_Ohiooo wrote: post #9

freediddy wrote: post #4

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.

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.

> Maybe you're just buying cheap poor quality bulbs?

If only that were true. Osram is a well-renowned brand so you'd think their - rather pricey - 'high-wattage' (10W) bulbs meant for outside lights here on the farm would last longer than about a year, all in different armatures, all with plenty of cooling (they're mainly used in autumn/winter/spring when it tends to be rather chilly here in Sweden). You'd think cheap bulbs go bad quickly but the cheap 'Biltema' brand bulbs I bought for some rooms just keep on going without marked loss of output.

All in all the average life time of a LED bulb seems to be around 2-3 years before it either has dimmed so much that it is no longer usable or it has failed outright. There are exceptions like the mentioned cheap bulbs which are still going strong after about 9 years of close to daily use or those Osram bulbs which fail in about a year or less or the (not mentioned) 'fluorescent tube replacement fixtures' which last less than a year before one of the 4 LED segment strips fails due to a failed LED. I repair these by replacing the failed chip, they work for a few months and then the things fail again.

I've used 'efficient' lighting since I bought my first house starting with jam-jar like Philips SL 'bulbs' (compact fluorescent tubes with all the related gizmos packaged in a single replaceable unit) for which I made fixtures out of birch plywood wood, 90° PVC drain pipe bends and E27 sockets because those things were heavy at about 500 grams. None of those SL bulbs had failed when I moved out 6 years later, I still have some somewhere in storage. Later I moved to the lighter PLC version which also tended to last a long time, some of them are still in use here. Then came LED bulbs which were supposed to last for tens of thousands of hours... and I suddenly started to have to think about replacing failed bulbs again.

Re: Increasing the lifespan of a bulb makes it worse in every other way

#42

Post by mort96 » Fri, Jul 31, 2026, 11:09 PM UTC

wolfgangK wrote: post #36

BTW, I don't understand why having the driver converting AC to DC inside the LED spots is the default. For a new house, it seems to make sense to me to have at least one external driver for a ceiling of spots, if not one per floor (not one for the whole house because pf the drop in voltage). But 24V led spots seem much less common and I cannot find many reviews. Any idea why it's not more common ? It seems efficiency…

It seems like a pretty normal local maximum situation, no? It's a solution which works "well enough" and means all light bulbs work in all light fixtures and all light fixtures work with all light bulbs. It would be better if we all moved away from LED, got all new standardized 24V light fixtures and stopped putting the power supply in the base of a standard E26 light bulb socket, but those kinds of transitions are costly.

It probably also doesn't help that this would require industry-wide cooperation between companies which would much rather sell their own light fixture + LED combo which people have to replace regularly than a light fixture which people buy once and keep for life.

Re: Increasing the lifespan of a bulb makes it worse in every other way

#43

Post by foobarchu » Fri, Jul 31, 2026, 11:09 PM UTC

xnx wrote: post #14

freediddy wrote: post #4

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.

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

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)

Re: Increasing the lifespan of a bulb makes it worse in every other way

#44

Post by mort96 » Fri, Jul 31, 2026, 11:11 PM UTC

freediddy wrote: post #4

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.

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.

Re: Increasing the lifespan of a bulb makes it worse in every other way

#45

Post by francisofascii » Fri, Jul 31, 2026, 11:12 PM UTC

jsLavaGoat wrote: post #5

5700 is a terrible temperature for lighting unless that matches the daylight. Soft white and even reddish is much better at night. Presumably, most artificial light it used at night. 2700 is more like it. My LED lightbulbs change temperature based on the time of day and are dull red at night so you both don't wake up and you don't stub your toe. Show me a non-LED that can do that.

A dimmed incandescent bulb will shift from 2700k down to maybe 2200k. Maybe not as versatile as your LED but it worked well to somewhat mimic the sun before LEDs.

Re: Increasing the lifespan of a bulb makes it worse in every other way

#46

Post by comrade1234 » Fri, Jul 31, 2026, 11:13 PM UTC

There are varying levels of quality for the same bulb. I don't know what the difference is in the bulb but they make a difference in the order of years.

I'm in Switzerland where we can no longer buy halogen bulbs. Every bulb in our apartment is led except 7 bulbs under the cabinets in our kitchen. I used to buy bulbs from a hardware store but they would only last about a year. When they banned halogen bulbs I found that I could buy them from a photography supplier for more money. The product number was different but it had the right specs. They've been going for three years and no burn outs.

Re: Increasing the lifespan of a bulb makes it worse in every other way

#47

Post by dataflow » Fri, Jul 31, 2026, 11:16 PM UTC

comrade1234 wrote: post #46

There are varying levels of quality for the same bulb. I don't know what the difference is in the bulb but they make a difference in the order of years. I'm in Switzerland where we can no longer buy halogen bulbs. Every bulb in our apartment is led except 7 bulbs under the cabinets in our kitchen. I used to buy bulbs from a hardware store but they would only last about a year. When they banned halogen bulbs I found t…

What do you like about halogen bulbs?

Re: Increasing the lifespan of a bulb makes it worse in every other way

#48

Post by foobarchu » Fri, Jul 31, 2026, 11:17 PM UTC

pigpop wrote: post #33

jsLavaGoat wrote: post #5

5700 is a terrible temperature for lighting unless that matches the daylight. Soft white and even reddish is much better at night. Presumably, most artificial light it used at night. 2700 is more like it. My LED lightbulbs change temperature based on the time of day and are dull red at night so you both don't wake up and you don't stub your toe. Show me a non-LED that can do that.

It's called a dimmer switch.

Brightness and color temperature are orthogonal. The dimmer switch only controls brightness.

Re: Increasing the lifespan of a bulb makes it worse in every other way

#49

Post by tzs » Fri, Jul 31, 2026, 11:18 PM UTC

TacticalCoder wrote: post #20

jsLavaGoat wrote: post #5

5700 is a terrible temperature for lighting unless that matches the daylight. Soft white and even reddish is much better at night. Presumably, most artificial light it used at night. 2700 is more like it. My LED lightbulbs change temperature based on the time of day and are dull red at night so you both don't wake up and you don't stub your toe. Show me a non-LED that can do that.

> Show me a non-LED that can do that. Many of use simply don't find LED lights, no matter the color they try to simulate, enjoyable. I find my LED lights, including fancy decorative ones, bearable only because I always use one real, old-school, warm white (more like yellow really), incandescent (hence non-LED) light in my living room. And, yup, if you know what you're looking for, it's totally possible to still buy i…

Have you tried Philips Ultra Definition bulbs? They have 1/6th the flicker percentage of incandescent bulbs and 1/3 the flicker index.

Here's a review I found of several bulbs for CRI, flicker, dimming performance, and spectral characteristics [1].

[1] https://www.thesmarthomehookup.com/25-soft-white-led-light-b...

Re: Increasing the lifespan of a bulb makes it worse in every other way

#50

Post by stavros » Fri, Jul 31, 2026, 11:20 PM UTC

HappyPanacea wrote: post #37

wolfgangK wrote: post #36

BTW, I don't understand why having the driver converting AC to DC inside the LED spots is the default. For a new house, it seems to make sense to me to have at least one external driver for a ceiling of spots, if not one per floor (not one for the whole house because pf the drop in voltage). But 24V led spots seem much less common and I cannot find many reviews. Any idea why it's not more common ? It seems efficiency…

It would be nice to have the driver and LED decoupled from each other with a standard socket between driver and LED even if there is one per bulb.

That's what I've always thought as well. The driver could also fit in the standard sockets that bulbs fit in now, with the socket/LED interface being a different standard connector.