What's the best LED light to replace 75W Halogen PAR30 recessed flood?

sleepysurf

sleepysurf

Well-Known Member
Sep 8, 2010
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I'm going crazy trying to find a suitable replacement for my 75W PAR30 Halogen in-ceiling recessed floods. I've tried a couple different ~17W PAR30 LED's from local Home Depot/Lowes, as well as LEDWholesalers off Amazon, but all have been too cool (bluish) white, not as bright, and lacking true flood dispersion. The old Halogens (even incandescents) are no longer being manufactured, and I'm not willing to spend $30-60 ea for LED types that can't duplicate the warm white color and dispersion we're used to. Has anybody found a decent LED brand that you (and spouse/SO) are happy with?
 
Oh, man. Get with the 5500 degK bulbs that have a color rendering index (CRI) of at least 90, 100 is the highest. There is nothing like it. The light looks like sunlight in your house all day long. They are worth every penny. Colors in your house will pop alive and look fantastic. Incandescent/yellow warm light is better than a candle, but not much.

The only incandescent bulbs I have remaining in my house are in the refrigerators and ovens, and your post just gave me incentive to see if I can change it in my refrigerators. It's unlikely anything but an incandescent bulb can be used in an oven.

If you insist on the yellow bulbs, Satco makes a wide variety. See their website.
 
Amir, most of my local stores (and online sources) no longer have the Halogens in stock, and say they do not expect any more, as production has ceased. That's why prices of remaining stock are skyrocketing! If I could, I'd buy a 5 year supply of Halogens, to last me until LED's have been perfected and more reasonably priced!
 
Gary, do you have a link or manufacturer for those 5500K versions? I thought 2800-3000K was considered the best indoor color spectrum. 5500 must be blinding!
 
Satco and Vita-Lite/Durotest, are major manufacturers of color corrected fluorescent par and other shape bulbs. Home Depot also has 5500 degK bulbs, and they aren't bad, but they aren't quite as color corrected as the Vita-Lite or Satco or some other highly specialized (and expensive) specialty brands.

Satco makes many LED par bulbs.

The brightness is dependent on wattage and lumen output, not Kelvin temperature. The kelvin temperature describes the color. The CRI describes the fidelity of the specified Kelvin temperature of the bulb compared to a black body heated to that Kelvin temperature.

Incandescent bulbs always have a CRI of 100 because their color temperature IS the color of the black body (the filament) heated to the specified temperature. A 100 W bulb, now extinct, had a color temperature of about 2600-2700 degK and an output of 1710 lumens before the energy conservationists started bastardizing all the specs. Higher wattage bulbs typically have slightly higher color temps. A capsule type halogen bulb has a color temperature usually about 100 degK higher than the same wattage incandescent. A Photo-flood used to be 3200 degK. I haven't used them in years, so I don't know what they are now. The 3200 degK bulbs also burned out in 6-8 hours. The long lasting incandescent bulbs burn at a lower temperature/yellower, which is how they can last longer. Unfortunately, virtually all manufacturers LIE about the lumen ratio between their bulb and an incandescent equivalent. They often say their roughly 20-25 watt bulbs are equal to a 100W incandescent, but those bulbs only have about 1000-1200 lumens. LIARS abound and salespeople ignorant of the bulbs they are selling are equally ubiquitous. When a lighting sales rep shows up at my office unannounced, I usually see them to see what they have, but I also end up explaining what they are selling to them because most have little real knowledge about lighting.


As an alternative, some people might also like 5000 degK metal halide par lamps but the CRI of LEDs and fluorescents are usually, not always, better than the metal halides.

(I'm familiar with this because color and tissue matching is an important part of my practice.)
 
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sleepysurf said:
Amir, most of my local stores (and online sources) no longer have the Halogens in stock, and say they do not expect any more, as production has ceased. That's why prices of remaining stock are skyrocketing! If I could, I'd buy a 5 year supply of Halogens, to last me until LED's have been perfected and more reasonably priced!
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Must be regional thing. I replaced my halogen just a couple of months ago. But to be on the safe side, I bought an extra :).

In our main house we use fluorescent lights in our kitchen. They take a bit to warm up but otherwise have very good light and of course very economical. And light quality is very good having some of that familiar "yellow" in them.
 
GaryProtein said:
Oh, man. Get with the 5500 degK bulbs that have a color rendering index (CRI) of at least 90, 100 is the highest. There is nothing like it. The light looks like sunlight in your house all day long. They are worth every penny. Colors in your house will pop alive and look fantastic. Incandescent/yellow warm light is better than a candle, but not much.

The only incandescent bulbs I have remaining in my house are in the refrigerators and ovens, and your post just gave me incentive to see if I can change it in my refrigerators. It's unlikely anything but an incandescent bulb can be used in an oven.

If you insist on the yellow bulbs, Satco makes a wide variety. See their website.
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Gary

who makes those lights
 
Vita-Lite by Durotest.

Satco is by Satco.

If you want super high CRI, General Electric has T8 tubes that have about 98 CRI but they are VERY expensive and I don't have the models handy.

In my office, I use Lumiram T8 bulbs with a CRI of 96 and 5000 degK.

There are also Lumiram 6500 degK T8 tubes with a CRI of 98, but you want to keep the color temperature nearer to sunlight in my opinion. 6500 degK is actually "north light" that comes in your window, also called "skylight" or "daylight" sometimes.

Some bulbs have very high CRI around 97-98 but with a temperature of even 7500 degK, but unless you know what you are doing, you don't want that. You don't want to just go for higher and higher color temps because you gain more blue and lose the reds. Low temperature incandescents have moderate reds but little blues. 5000 degK gives an equal spectral power curve for all the colors in the spectrum. The 7500 degK bulbs would be useful for a furrier, for example because he would be matching pelts and would want them to match and look well on a dreary gray winter's day when you would be wearing a fur coat. You wouldn't be wearing that coat on s sunny summer day. For most things, with an equal spectral power curve that you have in the 5000-5500 degK bulbs. Color matching under light with an even spectral power curve helps minimize metamerism. Metamerism is why you clothes matched when you got dressed under incandescent light but look mismatched when you go outside. This is due to different amounts of ROYGBIV in the spectra you are lighting your space with.
 
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I've been very happy with the Eco-smart LED par replacements and the Philips typical 'Edison' style LED replacements. The Philips are balanced to around 2800-3000K IIRC and the Eco-smarts PARs are more toward 5500K. Not cheap, but they'll last forever and are far more efficient than any incandescent.

As to what's right color-wise, it's all about application. For example, depending on your living room or den, you may want a warmer, 'homier' look; in the kitchen, something cleaner and cooler. Something to remember with LEDs is that unlike incandescents, they don't shift color temp when dimmed, so you can't 'warm them up'.

The problem with flourescents, cool white, warm white, whatever, is that they tend to have color spikes in other parts of the spectrum, typically a bit of green which ain't that flattering.
 
rblnr said:
I've been very happy with the Eco-smart LED par replacements and the Philips typical 'Edison' style LED replacements. The Philips are balanced to around 2800-3000K IIRC and the Eco-smarts PARs are more toward 5500K. Not cheap, but they'll last forever and are far more efficient than any incandescent.

As to what's right color-wise, it's all about application. For example, depending on your living room or den, you may want a warmer, 'homier' look; in the kitchen, something cleaner and cooler. Something to remember with LEDs is that unlike incandescents, they don't shift color temp when dimmed, so you can't 'warm them up'.

The problem with flourescents, cool white, warm white, whatever, is that they tend to have color spikes in other parts of the spectrum, typically a bit of green which ain't that flattering.
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As far as the homier look is concerned, once you switch and use the 5000-5500 degK bulbs, you'll NEVER go back to dingy yellow incandescent looking light whether it is produced by a standard incandescent, capsule type halogen, compact fluorescent or LED. The compact fluorescents do take a couple of minutes to come up to full brightness, but that's not a big price to pay in my opinion. The LED's as you say, some on immediately and if you're walking through a room rather than staying there, it could be a factor in making your purchase. The color corrected, high CRI, full spectrum fluorescents do not have a green cast or color spikes. They are just beautiful. As far as a homey, warm colored kitchen light is concerned, if you want your food to look delicious, you MUST use a color corrected full spectrum 5000-5500 degK light source. Your meats will look red and beefy and the colors of your vegetables will pop and look as vibrant and fresh as they did outdoors in the garden.
 
I just installed Philips LED's throughout my house. Main issue is that although they are dimmable, the dimmer's aren't that quiet with them, and BTW, you do need to use special LED dimmer's...which aren't that cheap either.
Apparently, the dimmer technology hasn't quite caught up yet.:(
 
missed this reply:

As far as a homey, warm colored kitchen light is concerned, if you want your food to look delicious, you MUST use a color corrected full spectrum 5000-5500 degK light source.
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In the kitchen my recommendation was for something cleaner and cooler.

As far as the homier look is concerned, once you switch and use the 5000-5500 degK bulbs, you'll NEVER go back to dingy yellow incandescent looking light whether it is produced by a standard incandescent, capsule type halogen, compact fluorescent or LED.
Click to expand...

What kind of color of light you want is all subjective obviously, but I don't find a good quality warmer light, say 2700-3000 deg K dingy. Studies have indicated that we're wired in to find warmer light comforting -- fire, sunrise/sunset, and even to old incandescent look (read nostalgia) elicits certain feelings for many people. In a den, for example, I like a warmer look, adds to the atmosphere depending on the decor. In our den, which has bamboo floor and tambour paneling as well as deep red on some walls, the warm light there is very nice IMO.
 
I relamped my entire livingroom (10 75W PAR floods) with dimmable LED equivalents. I'm very happy with the quality and color rendering of the light. Since I shoot video quite often in that room, a poor CRI would look terrible on video. But these LEDs closely mimmick the halogen filament color range, and to the unaware observers, they look like standard halogen bulbs with a similar dispersion pattern. I no longer have the packaging, so I don't recall what the manufacturer was. May have been Phillips. $30 a bulb though. I did the conversion over 2 years, as I could make the funds available little by little. Electricity savings have already paid for the bulbs.
 
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