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which recessed halogens while waiting for LED

16 years ago

I'll be adding recessed lighting to my family room and am unsure what to use. Not interested in florescent and think that LED might not be quite advanced enough.

The adjoining kitchen & hallway have ~20 6" incandescent cans with black interior trim. We're looking to retrofit those someday too and the cree LR6 seems like a great option as prices fall.

My preference for the new lights in family room (based on looks) is a 4" halogen with wheat trim. Dimming is critical and I use Insteon dimmers to control lighting scenes. (The insteon folks tell me that 90% of magnetic transformers work fine.) But my electrician is pushing Line Voltage as a better retrofit alternative (since it's more mainstream and less complicated without transformers.)

So what will be best able to retrofit from halogen to LED in a couple of years? Line voltage or low voltage? 4" or 6"? Are the low voltage (magnetic) transformers used for halogens now suitable for LED (considering heat issues, etc.)?

Thanks! After hours of research I'm just confused!

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Comments (4)

coffeehaus
16 years ago
Confused?! Well, welcome to the club!
There was a recent thread on this. Maybe it will help.

Here is a link that might be useful: Best recessed kitchen lights
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cherylb13
Original Author
16 years ago
So I bought the CREE LR6 today and installed one, but it's not going to work... I've become addicted to my nice smooth ramp rates when turning lights on and off and since these only dim to 20%, they shut off rather abruptly.

So I guess I am back to halogens for now. Just have to decide low vs. line voltage.
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You've definitely got a point about the overall cost. $100.00 or so per fixture is a lot- no matter what. So that's just a matter of budget. 3 grand is 3 grand. I don't necessarily agree on other issues for waiting. I have the LR6 mounted right next to a 50 watt (Ushio) MR16 recessed light to show customers. The MR16 still of course is crisper and whiter, but the LR6 is darn close. By far it's superior to incandescent and fluorescent. I don't know what electricity pricing is in FL, but just in the amount of energy people save here in CA with the LR6, they cover the costs of the bulb. Again though, they have to plunk down a lot of money to start with. In general, I agree with the lighting designer. LEDs aren't ready for prime time (main task/ general lighting), except for the LR6. It is wonderfully engineered. It can actually sense when the color it is emitting goes out of whack. It'll then automatically adjust the LEDs internally to get back to the CRI you started with. Cree doesn't use white LEDs within the bulb. They use a combination of yellows and other colors. They then have the frosted shade in front to give the final touch. White LEDs still aren't right. But overall, waiting never really hurts. No matter what comes out, it'll be made for a standard 5" or 6" can. And the price most probably will drop in a year or so.
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Go low voltage. Yes, they're more expensive, but you get more. They last longer, put out less heat, are more efficient and give better light than incandescent. Don't forget that a 4" hole in your ceiling is visibly much nicer than a 6". The low voltage halogen bulbs send most of the heat up, into the can. Line voltage bulbs send all the heat down... to the top of your head. That's why, if you look at the cans, the low voltage ones are much bigger- even though the bulb is so much smaller. I have a low voltage halogen bulb which lasts 20,000 hours. That blows away any fluorescent. And very soon there will be LED replacement bulbs/ modules for the low voltage fixtures. I wouldn't combine the halogen with incandescent. The incandescent has a different color temperature and is bigger (and not as bright). And when you dim a halogen, the light becomes a very soft and inviting. Keep in mind as well that an incandescent bulb continually emits less light. As the filament burns off and settles on the inside of the bulb (the black stuff you see), it blocks light. The halogen doesn't do that. The burned off filament keeps recycling back until it finally dies. That's how it lasts so long. So at day one, the halogen is twice as bright. 2 years into it, the halogen can be 3 times as bright- simply because the incandescent is dimmer.
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lightguy
16 years ago
Go low voltage. A good quality one will not give you any trouble. The transformer is already wired into the housing, so your electrician's job is the same.

I can see where he might have had issues in the past with lower quality ones. But every lighting design I do is either 100% low voltage or in combination with the Cree bulb.

I'm getting an LED replacement bulb for 3" & 4" low voltage cans soon. It's bigger than an MR16, but is made to fit in the regular low voltage housing. It's 10 watts and delivers the same amount of light as a 50 watt MR16. The coolest part is that it has a selectable beam spread. You just turn the optic and change it from a spot to a flood.
I have to test the actual brightness and dimmability.

The important thing though is that newer LED bulbs will fit in existing low voltage cans.

So go with the smaller, brighter low voltage cans now. When the LED technology gets to the point that you're happy with it, you can easily swap out the bulb.
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modern_miss
15 years ago
Cherylb 13, if you're still around, can you post an update? Did you use low voltage or line voltage halogen?
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