I've never had LED lights last anywhere near the purported 5-7 year timeframe. The worst ones are the small decorative ones with the tinier screw part that my house seems to have an inordinate number of. Those last maybe 6 months and then they start getting dimmer and then all the lights in the circuit get worse at once. I like LED lights immensely but the idea they last even 2 years is a lie in my opinion.

I had that dimming issue in my house... And got the gas boiler serviced cause it had a problem with the ignitor, and all the dimming stopped.

Now the house is ancient, so I'm guessing there was some sort of short happening that was causing this.

> Those last maybe 6 months and then they start getting dimmer and then all the lights in the circuit get worse at once.

Have you checked the wiring? I may be stating the obvious, but in household electrical wiring every fixture or receptacle is connected to its circuit in parallel.

I can't think of a way for one bulb on a correctly-wired circuit to fail in a way that causes other bulbs to dim, unless the failed bulb is essentially shorting out the circuit but not causing the breaker to trip for some reason.

If you know why it's behaving that way, I'd love to know too. I've never seen anything like that.

I bought all new Philip hue bulbs going on 7 or 8 years ago now and not a single one has gone bad. Maybe you're just buying cheap poor quality bulbs?

A 100 out of 100 success rate after 8 years.

I bought a bunch of bulps when I moved to my house about 7 years ago. Some are on like 90% of the time since.

I haven't had a single one go bad so far.

Cheap WiZ bulps

I have never had an LED light bulb fail. I'm still using the same 6-pack I bought over a decade ago, bringing them with me from apartment to apartment. I only have 5 remaining because the glue that holds the glass bulb onto the base eventually failed on one and I couldn't be bothered to figure out what the correct adhesive would be for lightbulbs.

In the category of private victories without any economic use (any hobby costs you something): I store boxes for LED lights with receipts. Write on the box where you put the light and chug it in the garage. I have not failed to get a new one for free at our local home depot equivalent after 3 to 4 years. It doesn’t help the store that the boxes used to state how many years they would last.

I agree that even Osram doesn’t meet the hours or years, Philips doesn’t by a long way.

Hm... race to the bottom? We bought our current apartment (built in the 1980s) 12 years ago, and I have switched to LED lighting everywhere from the beginning. Main learning: old relays and/or dimmers seem to generate voltage spikes that are fine for old lightbulbs, but kill LED lamps in a matter of months, so that it looks like the lamps themselves might be the cause. After I replaced those, no more problems - most of the LED lamps from the beginning (except for those connected to old relays and dimmers) are still with us! I also tend towards brand name LED lights (Philips & co), which might be a bit more expensive, but have (I hope) better quality checks.

Because LED lighting is electronics it hates heat, unlike an incandescent lamp. So the most common cause of shorter lifetimes is that the LED can't discard enough heat to the environment and begins to overheat. Small (or absent) heatsinks, installation which (perhaps for aesthetic reasons) puts the lighting where warm air can't escape and of course just putting the lighting directly in concentrated sunlight will make this worse.

I have a room which is lit for like 10-20 hours per day and so it clocks up hours very quickly and my LED lamps are guaranteed for 2 years so I figured surely the guarantee would trigger but nope, I began keeping receipts and turns out that I only need to replace one every 3-5 years it must just feel frequent because it's annoying, I just dug out the most recent receipt and it's from 2021. I will continue keeping the receipts to feel better about the annoyance.

Yeah my parents had the type with the external driver box from Bunnings, and they died every 6 months or so. Those were DIY with a little pigtail plug.

They were awful. I genuinely believed that LED lights were crap.

In our new house the sparky put in a proper Chinese brand from the commercial sparky store I guess, no external box, dimmable, 4 adjustable hues with a toggle switch. They were like $10 each. Been 7 years no failures.

We have some really expensive ATOM ones above the shower (IP68) and outside around the perimeter. Those were around $75 each, but are the same age as well, no issues.

Every Philips L-Prize bulb I bought in 2012 is still working. Some have been on about 30% of the time since purchase. A few have been dropped multiple meters onto concrete; oops. Well made LED bulbs last. Cost-optimized ones may not.

I've lived in my current home for 5 years with LED lighting, and we have hardly changed any lightbulbs in the house. I've got no idea how old those bulbs are. I lived in my previous place for 7 years and changed a handful of bulbs.

Can't say my experience matches at all!

Randomly, my Philips Hue E27 bulbs last far longer than any of the China Zigbee clones I've bought, but like all mass produced goods, there are outliers that fail.

The cheap China stuff tend to fail in a few months, while I've only had two Hue bulbs in my collection fail ever, so Philips seems to be doing something right.

Enclosed fixtures can kill some LED bulbs quickly if they can't dissipate heat.

I guess if people are nerding out on lights in this subthread, maybe someone can recommend me a type or source for low-K (say, 2200K or something thereabout) bulbs with good CRI (yes, I know, but I can still notice a big difference at 2700. I don't know how low it will matter to me, but I want to see)

Do you keep your light on constantly?

I used to have a lamp that I kept replacing bulbs for "all the time". I didn't understand why since the light bulbs claimed to last for years and years. One day I read the light bulb package more closely, and it said something along the lines of, "7 years life span at 2 hours per day" in small text (the numbers may be wrong, going by memory). Doing the math, the number of active hours claimed on the box turned out to be roughly true. I don't know if LED bulb packages play similar tricks but it's worth checking out.

I had an LED porch light that lasted ~10 years. The fixture had light and motion sensors, so it wasn't on during the day or all night, and often it was not running at full brightness, but still it was on a lot. I was surprised it lasted that long, especially since it was outdoors.

I switched to all LED lighting many years ago. I've had a few that lasted less than a year, but by and large I'd say that nearly all the lights I've had have lasted at least on the order of years.

My n=1 study: I built my living room lights about 8 years ago and have had to swap 1/20 lamps since. Perhaps try a better manufacturer?

I’ve never had a Hue bulb fail in about a decade of using them in every fitting.

Ditto. They barely last 12 mos. This goes for both types: LED Light Chips (Strips) and LED String Lights from various manufacturers.

In mid 2016 I replaced around 25-30 incandescent bulbs (7 x 100 W, a couple or so 40 W, and the rest 60 W) with Walmart Great Value non-dimmable LEDs. Basically every incandescent bulb I could find around the house that was not on a dimmer and was A19 shape with an E26 base (except I forgot the attic and crawlspace).

There was some sort of deal between Walmart and Puget Sound Energy that applied an instant rebate automatically so that they simply rang up on checkout for $0.17.

They are all still working fine.

I owned my last house for 12 years, I replaced 1 bulb?

Half the bulbs were carried over from a previous house, so some are ~14 years old. Admittedly these were early ones, so the original batch had metal bodies etc. the replacement was a Phillips one. This is in the UK though, with pendant fittings, so less heat issues.

That is weird. Mine are basically infinite.

This sounds like you have electrical issues. I've lived in a couple of apartments before where bulbs would go all the time. Outside of that I've been using the same Phillips Hue bulbs for going on 8 years without any issue.

I've run 30w led modules for 10+ years by - using real power conversion components, making sure they have sufficient cooling and running them at 75% of their rated current. they still seem plenty bright.

We have several hundred smart led lights from I want to say Lutron? In my home going on year 6 soon and we’ve had to replace only 3-4 so far. 3 of those replacements were on the same circuit as well so I question if the circuit isn’t at fault.

Plural of anecdote isn’t data and all that but I think the several hundred quantity adds some weight. Also about 90 of those are in outdoor lamps so there’s a good amount dealing with weather and we’ve not had to replace any of those yet.

If you are installing LED lamps into enclosed fixtures you need to use LED lamps rated for enclosed fixtures or they will die an early death. A globe around a lamp with an open bottom and a recessed can are both enclosed, even though you can see the lamp. Heat rises.

Similarly, you can’t install recessed cans into a ceiling that is insulated without them being IC rated or they will die an early death.

Spend a few dollars more per lamps for quality ones. Philips makes decent LED lamps, I’m fond of their 2200-2700K dimmable lamps that lower the color temp as they dim. Philips makes an E12 base BA11 shape (candelabra) lamp that should fit your needs.

I buy Keystone lamps LED T8 lamps almost exclusively, but those are pretty uncommon in homes.

Commercial LED fixtures are rated for 50,000 hours typically but they have a separate LED driver and massive heatsinks to provide that sort of lifespan.