I find the brightness of the lights in my TT marginal at best. It is not that the lights are dim; it is just that even with both bulbs shining brightly, they only draw 30 watts of power. My average home lamp is 60 to 75 watts.We all know the LED draws about 1/10 the power of the incandescent but how much less light does it put out? For those who have done the switch; is it just as bright, brighter, less bright? And, how does the color compare?Does anyone have the data that compares the Lumen output of a 12 volt RV incandescent to the lumens of an LED designed to plug into the RV lamp socket?I do not mind replacing the out dated incandescent lamps, but I certainly do not want less light output and would definitely prefer more.

Yes, all the ones I have are either as bright or brighter than incandescent.I am using LEDs from here

A typical incandescent 1141 lamp is roughly 250-255 Lumens.I looked up some of the lights in the link above, this one is 360 Lumens.

We replaced all the bulbs with LEDs that were rated at 250 lumens. The color temperature was equivalent to a soft white. They are all as bright or brighter than the incandescent bulbs and definitely cooler. The only problem I ran into was one interfered with the radio. I replaced it with a spare and no more static. They were all from the same batch of 12. Odd. We are very pleased with the switch.

My 2015 Jayco came with all LED lighting inside. Those lights are super bright, brighter than the incandescent lights in my old trailer, but more importantly, They don't get hot enough to melt the lens, nor am I scared of my daughter burning herself on her bunk light.

Some of the inexpensive LEDs you can find are much less bright than the incandesanct so make sure you read the numbers. As the above posters have said, you can get LEDs that do a great job.

Are LED RV lights as bright as incandescent? | Good Sam Community

trail-explorer
Explorer
Oct 03, 2015
Here's another source: LED Supplier for RV style LEDs
rbpru
Explorer II
Sep 16, 2015
I want to thank everyone for the info. It seems I can buy a bunch of the warm and a bunch of bright LEDs for less than $30.00 on eBay; and decide which I like. I suspect each will have a specific area of use in our TT. The DW will decide that.

Again thank, it certainly was more involved than I first thought.
ktmrfs
Explorer II
Sep 16, 2015
SoundGuy wrote:
ktmrfs wrote:
check out cree LED bulbs. the warm whites are 2700K.

I've Googled like crazy but all I see are lots of Cree bulbs for industrial and home use, nothing 12 vdc that can be used in an RV. I'll keep looking but in the meantime have you got a direct link to manufacturer info? :@

sorry if I misled you, AFAIK Cree bulbs are 120V std. edison base A19 style bulbs or flood/spot PAR30 or R38. I'd love to see some 12V bulbs.
westend
Explorer
Sep 16, 2015
Individual cree diodes, you can look through the Mfg's links for specs.

Seller of LED arrays/replacement bulbs
ktmrfs
Explorer II
Sep 16, 2015
Sean Boburk wrote:
I would stay away from CREE bulbs. Went to LED in the house...and four failed so far. Three were CREE.

CREE LEDs are good, but they can't make bulbs with their own LEDs.

Sean

I've got close to two dozen cree bulbs in our house, installed about a year ago, so far so good, no failures. We will see how they hold up. Recently Cree came out with a 3 way, 30,70,100 bulb that I just started trying.
SoundGuy
Explorer
Sep 16, 2015
ktmrfs wrote:
check out cree LED bulbs. the warm whites are 2700K.

I've Googled like crazy but all I see are lots of Cree bulbs for industrial and home use, nothing 12 vdc that can be used in an RV. I'll keep looking but in the meantime have you got a direct link to manufacturer info? :@
Sean_Boburk
Explorer
Sep 15, 2015
I would stay away from CREE bulbs. Went to LED in the house...and four failed so far. Three were CREE.

CREE LEDs are good, but they can't make bulbs with their own LEDs.

Sean
Huntindog
Explorer
Sep 15, 2015
I have ordered the 48 led panels a few different times. One time I got some that were too yellow for my liking. But I found a way to use them. The large glass bowl type fixture above my dinnette had two of the whiter panels, but it still needed to be briter for reading. Since there was a lot of room inside the fixture fo more panels, I started adding them mixing and matching until it suited me. It now has 5 panels in it. 3 of the yellower ones and two of the whiter ones. The frosted glass globe difuses and blends the colors perfectly.
It stll uses a lot less power than the incandecents and puts out much more light.

I also made super bright scare lights using the same method. My TT came with two. After modding them, I liked them so much that I replaced the standard porch light with a modded scare light as well.
ktmrfs
Explorer II
Sep 15, 2015
SoundGuy wrote:
trail-explorer wrote:
The warm white LEDs I use are the same color temperature as incandescent lamps.

Doubtful. Incandescent bulbs typically run ~ 2600 degrees Kelvin, the warmest LED equivalents typically run ~ 3200 degrees Kelvin. If you have documentation that shows otherwise I'd be interested in seeing it. ;)

check out cree LED bulbs. the warm whites are 2700K.
ktmrfs
Explorer II
Sep 15, 2015
westend wrote:
Nothing worse than buying a dozen or more of a color temp and then find out it's NOT what you want/like.
Exactly! I first read about sampling from Tenbear's posts about LED's. I believe he's right about that, as are you.
If my old peepers can be trusted, I've also seen a difference between alike panels but from different sellers. There should be no difference if all the LED's are the same size, type, and amount. Some that I have put out less lumens than others and the color is just a very small bit different. I experimented with my DIY fixtures (glass lense) and could just make out small differences.

A big difference can be the driver circuitry for the LED's. the cheap ones use a dropping resistor (BAD!!) no current limit, and unbalanced current to a string. The good ones use a pulsed constant current source. LED's brightness is not a linear function of current, but there is also a power disipation issue. so for max brightness you pulse them with a high current and maybe 50% duty cycle fast enough you don't see flicker. This equals high light output. And you make sure the current is constant over any applied voltage and temperature. Current is also a strong function of junction temperature IF you try to apply a constant voltage. If your not careful you get thermal runaway. LED's are nowhere near 100% efficient, more like maybe 20-30% . the rest goes as heat. And some of the resistor dropping sourced ones from china are likely closer to 10% overall efficiency. Still better than the 1-2% of a incandesent.

LED's, incandesents, or floresent lights are a very efficient heat source, with a economical side benefit of just happening to put out a small amount of light for the power applied to them.

And then the very best LED'have a phosphor coating, like floresent tubes do, that absorb some of the 3 (or 4) colors (red, green, blue and sometimes some yellow) which are very very narrow wavelengths, and then emit and different wavelengths (colors) to help fill in color spectrum.

All this can yield very different results depending on how well (or poor) the system is designed.