It’s time to switch to LED light bulbs if you’re still using halogen light bulbs.  If you haven’t researched LED light bulbs yet, now is the time as it finally makes sense to switch.   Sure, it may seem expensive when you’re looking at paying close to $20 per bulb, but the lifetime savings of both electricity costs and replacement bulb costs, the numbers are overwhelmingly in favor of switching over.

Let’s take my house for example.  I determined that I have 51 light bulb canisters in the ceiling of my home filled with 50 watt, PAR20 halogen flood  lights.  I’m going to use 50 as my basis as it makes it easier to do the calculations.  Each of the 50 watt bulbs cost approximately $9 to replace.  That’s $450 to replace all of the bulbs and on average the bulbs  will last about 2500 hours.

The average LED PAR 20 9.5 watt replacement bulb currently costs approximately $19 per bulb to purchase, but uses 1/5th of the electricity of the incandescent bulb.  Oh, and the LED bulbs last from 25,000 to 50,000 hours!  That’s 10 to 20 times as long.  Another advantage of the LED bulb is that it doesn’t heat up as much as an halogen bulb, therefore you will keep your room cooler in the summer.  The cost to replace, $900.  That’s $450 more than halogen, but will last 10 times longer, at minimum.  As you can see from my estimated savings below, the total replacement savings is around $12,000!

As you can see in the image below, based on the Energy Savings Calculator my estimated electricity savings is nearly $8000 over the life of the bulb!  That brings my total savings to over $20,000!

If you’re remodeling your house, then you should look at putting LED lights in all at the same time, but otherwise my advice is to give yourself a lighting budget each month.  I gave myself $100 per month to buy bulbs, that means it will take me about 10 months to completely change over.  I’ve replaced nearly 30 light bulbs now and I have already noticed brighter lighting and a lower electricity bill.  I also bought 3 extra LED bulbs to keep around should an incandescent bulb go out unexpectedly.

When I replaced the bulbs, I decided to replace one bulb in each room first, then a second, then a third, and so on.  I did this since I don’t really know which room takes up the most energy due to light bulbs, so I thought I would spread out the savings.  If you have a room that people are always in, then it would be good to replace all the bulbs in that room at once getting maximum savings for that room.

What are you waiting for?  It’s time to buy some LED light bulbs!  By the way, I use bulbs with a 3000 lighting ratings as they provide similar light to the halogen flood lights.