Because you are using them wrong.

But it’s not your fault…

Allow me to explain:

For roughly ever, we used incandescent bulbs, that work by getting hot. That’s the whole point. We designed all of our light fixtures around the thing inside of them getting really hot, and often trying to keep the things around that fixture from getting hot.

But LED’s flip that around. Heat is the enemy of LED bulbs. More specifically, heat is the enemy of the little power supply or “driver” that provides the proper power to an LED bulb.

The actual “light emitting diodes” generate heat, but they aren’t actually very vulnerable to it. But in an LED bulb, that by design has to be small, that power supply is right next to the hot little LED’s, and they will heat that power supply up.

And if the bulb isn’t reasonably well ventilated, that power supply will cook.

Put that above your dining room table, and those bulbs will probably last near their stated life.

In this “boob light”:

Expect the bulbs to last a fraction of their rated life.

Even if you get the “enclosure rated” bulbs, the fine print is often that they are rated for a single bulb in the enclosure… Not two or three.

Generally speaking, LED manufactures do a shit tier job of helping customers understand the bulbs they are buying, leading to broad dissatisfaction among buyers.

When buying an LED bulb, consider the following:

1. Lumens. This, not watts, is what should define brightness. A lot of manufactures use things like “60 watt equivalent”, but they play a lot of fuck-fuck games with the numbers, making those untrustworthy. Lumens, by contrast, should be properly rated.
2. Color temperature. Manufactures love to call this shit like “warm white/cool white/bright white/daylight/whatever” I don’t know what the fuck that means. Actual color temperature is a number between ~2000 and ~6000, where higher numbers are more blue. A lot of people think that this is about brightness, but it’s not. So they buy high color temperature bulbs, and are disappointed in that it makes everything look wrong to them. If you want to match old style incandescents, you want bulbs that are 2800K. Personally, I prefer slightly higher numbers, between 3000 and 3500. Others may prefer different numbers, and your application can vary. Home decor choices can also influence what you want your lighting color to be.
3. CRI, or color rendering index. The higher the number, the better. Some cheap bulbs have a very poor CRI, and this can cause things to look “wrong”.

So get bulbs that match your needs in those areas, and don’t put them in enclosed fixtures, and you’ll generally be very happy with LED bulbs.

We started a lighting consultancy over 30 years ago, and had plenty of light sources to choose from, depending on our needs.

Incandescent and halogen lamps were used in homes because they were bright, easily dimmable and came in a variety of shapes and sizes – with or without reflectors – power outputs and socket types.

Fluorescents were mainly used in workspaces, offices, garage shoppes, even kitchen counters due to their large size that created an even surface illuminance, their large luminous flux and relatively high luminous efficacy (hoy much light you get from each Watt of electrical power used). Color rendering was less than perfect, but more than acceptable, and their expected lifespan could easily surpass 20,000 hours.

Tubular fluorescent lamps were complemented by compact fluorescents that came in different shapes and sizes, even many with their integrated ballasts and E sockets to directly replace incandescent screw-on lamps.

They were difficult, costly or impossible to dim.

Other discharge lamps were mainly used for outdoor lighting due to their high lumen output, long life and elevated luminous efficacy. Lifespans of over 25,000 hours and efficacies of around 80 Lm/W were not uncommon. They would mostly not be dimmable or only step-dim.

Thanks to the pressure exerted by environmentalists, ill informed politicians partnered with the large lighting companies to replace – sometimes with incentives, sometimes by force of law – , all of these light sources by LEDs. Incandescents use too much electricity, discharge lamps have Mercury in them, so now we have LEDs.

They have a longer lifespan, better color rendering, higher efficacy, the “perfect” light source. The public only got the headlines, and they read: “no heat, last forever, consume nothing”.

LEDs are so good that we started making mistakes. Since the LED source has such a long life, chip on board (COB) luminaires seemed reasonable. The chip is integrated with the luminaire, so when the chip fails or dies the whole luminaire has to be replaced. LED, driver, aluminum housing, glass cover, silicone rubber seals, wires, everything. And with it goes all the energy that the production of these materials includes.

!00,000 hours of promised life mean that if the lighting was on 12 hours a day it would be on for aess than 4,500 hours a year, so 10 years would pass before 50,000 hours went by, and 20 years would still not suffice to reach the promised lifespan of an LED light.

What in our home or office is over 20 years old? Not our furniture, our car, most times not even the building is that old. Most luminaires will certainly be replaced before that age, even if they work well, because we like to have newer things around us.

The idea of a better, lasting, efficient light source is very appealing, even when it is costlier and high tech (which is not bad unless you consider that most LEDs are produced abroad and need to be imported), but in order for this to be true the numbers have to add up for the consumer. And as soon as the lifespan drops, the numbers don’t add up. And going towards cheaper lamps only makes it worse.

LEDs work fine if their temperature is kept low. But that implies that the luminous flux will not be very high. So producers increase the flux, mainly by increasing the current. Increasing the current increases the flux as well as the heat. Hot chips have a lower life expectancy and produce less light.

So, in the end, the only LEDs that live up to the expectations are very costly because they have sophisticated drivers, large heat sinks and quality components. And still serious companies do not promise o guarantee more than 50,000 hours of life expectancy.

Once more, the consumer has been misled, only this time it will be difficult to solve this problem until a new light source displaces LEDs, because our maneuvering capability is very, very limited. In the meantime, enjoy cheap LED lights made overseas and surrendering some more of your freedom of choice, your sovereignty and your hard earned money.