I can't answer all of your questions and I don't think anyone else can either because you don't always provide enough information in your posts. To have a hope of getting accurate help you need to include specifications such as brand names, model numbers or in the case of this fluorescent question at least the wattage of the CFLs and how far apart the cans are. Par 16 and Par 20 lamps are available in limited beam spreads from narrow flood to spot. The fluorescent are a wider beam spread. You could end up with more light in a concentrated area on the counter below each fixture with less light on the counter between each fixture unless the fixtures are spaced for some overlap of the beam. You will lose light up higher in the room because it is being directed more downward. 2700K fluorescent is similar to incandescent in color but if near each other people will notice. There are even slight differences between 2700K fluorescent lamps from different manufacturers that one can notice. Color temperature is only one factor. Colors are not as accurately reproduced under compact fluorescent lighting compared with incandescent. You'll notice a color change in your counter top. It will appear to be richer in color under incandescent lighting and may appear to be a slightly differrent overall color. Fluorescent does not produce all of the colors in the visible spectrum in the same intensities. If color is not produced in the same intensity then a surface can't reflect or absorb that color at the same intensity. This is why so many rebel against Title 24 going to great lengths and expense to work around it. No one wants to waste energy but neither do they want to pay $$$$ for pretty stuff then put inferior lighting on our pretty stuff which takes away from the richness of the stuff. Fluorescent has improved over the decades and LED is rapidly improving.

Xenon bulbs are typiclly rated for 5000-10,000 hours, Halogens 2000 hours, while both bulbs run hot, Xenon runs considerably cooler than Halogen, hence the warning on the lamp fixture. Halogen and tungsten halogen are the same, they are light with a tungsten filament and filled with Halogen gas. I would return the halogens, if you can, but regardless, use the xenon bulbs. Of course LED's would be your best choice both for efficiency as well as heat produced (or a lack thereof). Gary

"we haven't sold one fluorescent fixture in over 4 years ..." Well, sure. Stores sell what they push. If you don't suggest that customers buy a product, most won't. (I'm the exception, as I usually know what I want long before I step into a store. :) "the difference between low voltage halogen and fluorescent in terms of energy use and life is nothing close to what the numbers claim." As the old saw goes, the plural of anecdote is not data. If you have your lights dimmed most of the time, you've probably chosen the wrong light. Curiously, low light output is one of the places where low voltage incandescents "shine" (sorry). For a given wattage, the filament is thicker for better life and durability. Compared to line voltage incandescents, they can run hotter (and whiter) for better efficiency at low light output. But that's when they're run at normal voltage. You lose that advantage when you dim them. As you dim any incandescent lamp, its efficacy in lumens per watt, already overall the lowest of modern lighting systems, becomes even lower. This is a natural consequence of the lower filament temperature. In other words, your energy use is low because you aren't producing much light, not because your lights are efficient. So you could use even less energy if you'd use even lower voltage lights running flat-out - assuming you could find such lights. (Practically speaking, this is where LEDs come in.) BTW, a dimmed halogen lamp also loses one of its other great advantages over a conventional incandescent - maintaining light output over the full life of the lamp. That's because the chemical reaction that keeps tungsten boiled off the filament from deposting on the lamp envelope doesn't run at the lower temperatures of a dimmed lamp. "most fluorescents can't dim..." There are some retrofit dimmable CFs that dim rather nicely. I'll admit that they don't dim as low as many people would like, however. "Mercury is one of the biggest contaminants in land fills." I don't doubt that it could be a concern, but I'd like to see your source for this statement. Here's what counts, folks. When you use a fluorescent lamp, you are releasing LESS mercury into the world. Period. Most people state that and let it go, but here are the hard numbers. The amount of mercury in fluorescent lamps has gotten drastically smaller in the last couple of decades. A typical compact fluorescent lamp has only about 5mg. There are even some full-size linear fluorescent lamps (Philips Alto range, for example) that contain so little mercury - less than 3.6mg per 32 watt F32T8 lamp - that the EPA has actually approved disposing of them in regular trash, though I still recommend taking them to a household hazardous waste (HHW) disposal site (and do this myself). Now, a coal fired powerplant will emit about 3.5mg of mercury powering a 20W CF for its lifetime, taking that as 7500h (a rough average). If you chuck the CF in the trash, you've just released 8.5mg of mercury into the environment. If you take it to the HHW center and they recycle the mercury, you've released only 3.5mg. Now let's say you use a 75W incandescent bulb instead. Since it lasts an average of 750h you'll need 10 of them to the one CF. This uses more landfill space and more raw materials, but we'll neglect that for now. The salient point here is that although those 10 bulbs contain no mercury, the powerplant emits 13mg of mercury powering them. And there's not a thing you can do about it. You can't haul any of that mercury to your local HHW center. So, here's the bottom line. Using an incandescent bulb releases at least 53% more mercury into the environment than using a CF, and that's if you junk the CF in a landfill. If you use a CF and dispose of it properly at a HHW disposal center, the mercury released is only 3.5mg. In that case, using the incandescent bulb releases 270% more mercury, or 3.7 times as much. "Again, this boils down to personal preference." Absolutely. Choice is good. Informed choice is better. That's why I take the time to write this stuff. :)

That never occurred to me either. That problem didn't arise the two times I installed chandelier LED retrofits, but they were both fairly low-end store-brand fans. BTW, the LED bulb actually isn't the same wattage. The big print on the package is "equivalent incandescent wattage." LED retrofits typically use about 1/10 to 1/5 of the original bulb's power. And that may be the problem. Your fan controller may get confused by the retrofit's very low current consumption. This might be comparable to what happened to me when I installed retrofit LEDs in my car's parking lights and tail lights. (I got annoyed with repeatedly replacing the incandescent bulbs. Why is it that factory bulbs last 6-8 years and replacements last 1-2 years at most?). I looked out in the driveway that night and the taillights were glowing faintly. Spooky! Turns out that cars no longer have real switches for most (all?) lights. The switch you flip or turn just signals the body computer, which does the actual control of the lights with a semiconductor switch. Unlike a real switch, which has essentially infinite resistance when open, the semiconductor has measurable resistance. Without wanting to get too technical here, I'll just say that the LEDs' current draw was so low that a significant voltage remained across them when the "switch" was supposed to be off. In your case, I guess you could buy a new fan controller from Minka Aire, but it might not be worth the expense. If the fan were mine, I'd probably do some research on whether the controller was actually needed. If possible, I might just scrap it (or sell it used on Ebay) and connect both fan and light directly to old fashioned analog wall controls. But that's me. Sometimes I'm kind of a Luddite about such things.