If you’re like me, you’re probably considering or have already switched all of your fixtures over to LED. I think moving everything over to LED is a great idea. The question then becomes, should I just replace the bulbs with LEDs, or replace the entire fixture. And, should I just wait until the bulb dies, or should I go ahead and replace them now.

The answer really is that it depends. If you take a look at the power consumption of an LED bulb compared to a traditional light bulb, there is no doubt that it saves a significant amount of energy in comparison. The issue that I see is that lights really don’t consume that much energy anyway, when you compare it to other appliances. When I look at the box for a new bulb I just bought today, it says that I will save $85 over 13 years (the life of the bulb). That is only a saving of $.50 per month. Not a huge amount.

What I have chosen to do, is replace my bulbs with LED bulbs as they fail (sort of). I have several recessed can lights in my house. They are all dimmable. I have 6 in the living room, 3 in the kitchen, 5 in the master bedroom, and 2 in the master bath. Rather than spend the money to replace all of them in one go (they’re like $13 each), I have been replacing them as they burn out or as I can find them marked down at Lowes (read this article about Lowes markdowns, here).

As far as the regular light bulbs in my house (lamps, ceiling fans, etc), I replaced all of them at one time. I was at Rural King (I love this store) one day browsing around their clearance items and I they had an entire box of LED light bulbs marked down to $.40 ea. Needless to say, I bought the entire box. I went around and replaced every bulb in my entire house and I haven’t had any issues with the bulbs.

The biggest thing I will say about replacing LED bulbs is to make sure you get the bulb color warmth that you prefer. Some produce a warmer yellowish color while other are more white. Neither one is better than the other, it is just whatever you prefer.

Last year in Central Florida we had a hurricane and were out of power for 8 days. My generator worked to power most things, but it would have been nice to have fewer watts wasted on lights and more available to use for other things.

Either way, I think that LED lights are here to stay and most likely in the next 10 years, you’ll be hard pressed to find anything but LEDs.

To answer my original question, I prefer to go ahead and just replace the bulbs with new LED bulbs as they burn out. It is just easier to do and less time consuming than replacing the entire fixture.