LED Lighting, Now or Futuristic?

LED lighting is apparently coming of age. It uses very little power per watt, even less than fluorescent.

We know because we have a soffit in our family room ceiling that contains the light source. Currently, the light source is fluorescent tube lighting that does not really matter because you cannot see the source only the light reflecting out of the soffit. We rely on the light from the soffit as our main light for the room so it must remain fairly bright. Of course, as our home gets older, the fluorescent tube fixtures get older. As the fixtures get older they get worn and the florescent tubes will not shine bright for very long. Instead of replacing the old fixtures with new fluorescent fixtures we thought it would be interesting and economical to replace with LED lighting.

We did a little research and this is what we found out: LED lighting is up and coming but not quite here yet, unless, of course, you want to pay an arm and a leg. In order for us to get the amount of light we have now in our family room we would need between four and six LED lights per foot at about $30 each light. Our soffit measures more than 30 feet, so if you do the math that's about $10,000 for a family room light fixture!

Needless to say, we decided to wait. I can limp along for a year or two while the technology becomes more mainstream and more economical.