Question: My wife and I own a home in the Santa Barbara foothills that was built in the early 1990s. Our kitchen is original to the house, and we are very happy with our cabinets, countertops and appliances.
However, we would really like to upgrade the lighting, which has three circuits, all with recessed can lights with older style incandescent flood lights.
We would love some advice on how to convert to LED lighting.
Your Handyman: I personally am a big fan of LED lighting for many reasons, and in recent years it has become the dominant lighting for homes, stores, businesses, traffic lights and street lights.
You may know of UC Santa Barbara professor Shuji Nakamura, who is credited with the invention of the modern LED light being awarded the Nobel Prize and being labeled in the news media as a modern-day Thomas Edison.
The most noticeable feature of LED lights is that they emit a very clean, natural looking bright light that brings out the true colors and beauty of granite countertops, draperies, fabrics and art work in homes, and makes fine crystal and jewelry sparkle in stores.
Incandescent, fluorescent and compact florescent lights emit a light that is less pure, with a slight amber tint that tends to slightly subdue and distort colors.
Halogen also produces a clear bright light much like LED, but a halogen bulb creates so much heat it is often considered a fire hazard.
LED lights use a relatively small amount of electricity, and the typical older style can light that was designed to be used with a 100-watt incandescent flood light-style bulb, can be replaced with an LED light that uses less than 10 watts of electricity while producing an equivalent amount of illumination.
This same LED light is rated by the manufacturer to last for more than 30,000 hours while a compact florescent light or incandescent light usually lasts for considerably less than 10,000 hours.
Florescent lights work most efficiently when left on for extended periods of time, like at a retail store, and their life expectancy is greatly reduced when turned on and off for the shorter periods of time that are typical in homes while this type of use does not affect LED.
LED creates considerably less heat than other types of lights, especially halogen, and this is a major benefit, especially in retail stores where a significant amount of the energy consumed by air conditioning went to reducing the heat created by the incandescent or halogen lights that covered the ceilings of most mall-type shops in the past.
You can convert your older can lights by simply replacing the old bulb with a new LED bulb, or you can purchase conversion kits at a hardware store that allow you to completely change the look of the existing can by installing a new LED light and trim unit.
The LED light has a threaded connector that simply screws into the old light socket. You then connect the spring arms, slide the new light into the old recessed can, and your new LED light is ready for use.
If you are considering under-cabinet lighting or ambient lighting on top of the cabinets, then LED ribbon lights are a great solution. The ribbon lights are about a quarter-inch wide and have a tiny LED light every half-inch or so with a peel and stick backing with permanent 3M adhesive.
The power supply requires a small transformer called a driver that can easily be hidden inside a cabinet and is fully dimmable.
A typical installation has the LED ribbon running along the perimeter of the bottom of the cabinets, where they are concealed from view and fully illuminate the countertop and backsplash.
The ribbons can also be installed along the top of the cabinets, providing ambient illumination to an area of the kitchen ceiling that is often left in the shadows.
Most LED lights and ribbons are now dimmable, but if your dimmer switch is older, it may need to be replaced with a new LED-compatible dimmer.
The color or shade of the light emitted by LED is identified by a rating scale that is a throwback to its early laboratory days.
The rating number designates the color of light emitted by steel when heated to a certain degree measured in kelvin (seriously?), which is confusing at best and caused many LED items to be returned to the place of purchase.
All that you really need to know is that LED rated at 2700 has a warm, soft glow much like the old incandescent bulbs, and LED that is rated 3000 has a clear bright light much like sunlight.
Most LED sold for residential use is either 2700 or 3000. I personally prefer the 3000 because it is a clear bright light that doesn’t distort colors, unlike the 2700 that has a slight amber hue.
Because of this confusing rating scale, many LED bulbs and light fixtures sold now are advertised as “color changing,” which means there is a switch so you can change the color shade and not have to take it back to the store for a return.
