I converted our whole house to LEDS several years ago- the ones that offer “warm white” light which is similar to old standard incandescents. While the electric bill has gone down significantly and I don’t really worry about leaving a light or two on when away from the house, when using a table lamp to read by, I do notice it’s “different” lighting than the old days. Now that may be my eyes aging but I do prefer a single LED bulb in my workbench lighting to those cluster-type smaller LEDs seen in some desk lamps.
Even distribution of light is at least as important as overall total quantity of light. On super bright light in the middle of the room will never be as good as multiple smaller lights, adding up to the same total lumens, evenly spaced about the room. Unless you are trying to replicate a movie scene where there is some valuable treasure in the middle of the room and you want all light concentrated on it and dark shadows in the corners are of no consequence.
[:-^] I had the old flourescent work bench lites hanging over my various layouts for years and was fairly pleased with the lighting. Didn’t think of light dangers, and they have been used for years not only in industry but in homes all around the world, hanging work bench lights. A few years ago I discovered these light units but with LED’s, so I bought one, hung it in the train room over the work bench and WOW, nice light.
So, down came the old lights and up with new LED work bench lighting all around the layout and they seem to work fine. Seriously, no ill affects, excellent lighting and very bright.
All of our recent renovations use LED troffers in stead of lourscent. You cannot tell the difference unless you are watching the meters in the basement.
“Christmas” type LEDs do flicker when used on AC current since you are using only half of the 60cy wave. Used on the Railroad from a DC source, there is no flicker at all.
I redid the whine cellar in Christmas type LED strings to artistic effect, and it lights up the room well, but includes the AC flicker.
LED lamps are designed to run on AC and must have (I suppose) full wave rectification built into them.
The LED Troffers are a nice peice of work. They took a regular flourscent troffer, omitted all of the works and have just two strips of SMD type leds attached right to the metal troffer. I suppose there must be some sort of power control, because there is no flicker at all.
i have not read through all of the responses so excuse me if I am repeting what someone else might have already touched on
There are replacement LED “tubes” that will go directly into existing fluorescent fixture. They make both ballast compatable & ballast by-pass. I have just rebuilt all of the fixtures in my basement using the ballast by-pass type.
You remove the ballast & wire the 120v AC directly to one of the tombstones (other end…dead) The LED tube will work installed in only one direction… that end is marked L-N ( line -neutral)
You just need to make sure that the tombstone is not internally shunted. Also the LEDs come with a sticker to put on the fixture to warn that it is directly wired & that you should not attempt to replace with normal fluorescent lamps. A dead short would result in that end of the tube