Do LEDs really last as long as claimed?

Rated life assumes reasonable heat dissipation. Enclosed fixtures run hot and shorten it, so buy bulbs rated for enclosed use where that applies.

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What switching bulbs to LED actually saves

A single bulb is a rounding error. A house has forty of them, and a handful burn for hours every evening. Those are the ones worth changing: the saving scales with hours, not with the number of fittings.

Number of bulbsOld bulb wattsLED wattsHours on per dayYour state

What to know

Match lumens, not watts. An 800-lumen LED replaces a 60 W incandescent; buying by wattage alone is how people end up with rooms that are too dim.
LEDs last long enough that replacement cost mostly drops out of the calculation, which is why only the energy line matters here.
Dimming an LED does reduce draw, though not perfectly in proportion to the light output.

Questions

Do LEDs really last as long as claimed?: Rated life assumes reasonable heat dissipation. Enclosed fixtures run hot and shorten it, so buy bulbs rated for enclosed use where that applies.

State rates are averages of what residential customers actually paid (June 2026), from EIA. Your own plan can differ. Everything on this page is computed in your browser; nothing is sent anywhere.