YOU MAKE ME FEEL LIKE A NATURAL LUMEN:

LED light bulbs have a bright future: They look odd and are expensive, but LEDs could someday replace compact fluorescent lights as the main alternative to incandescent bulbs. (Troy Wolverton, June 8, 2011, LA Times)

They don't contain mercury, are truly instant-on, and the new 60-watt-equivalent bulbs typically can be dimmed.

Meanwhile, LED bulbs are expected to have life spans that are several times that of even CFLs. And they have been designed to emulate the light of incandescent bulbs.

At about 12 to 13 watts, they use slightly less energy than CFLs, and less than one-quarter of the energy of a 60-watt bulb. And unlike CFLs or incandescents, they're based on the same rapidly improving semiconductor technology found in the chips inside your PC and smartphone.

Thanks to that, LED bulbs should get more efficient in coming years. The Energy Department has set a target to have a 60-watt-equivalent bulb use just 10 watts — and some folks in the industry say they can get the energy use down even lower in coming years.

LED bulbs have been around for many years, but the initial 60-watt-equivalent bulbs mostly were made by off-brands and start-up companies and sold only by enthusiast websites. While you could find some LED bulbs in major stores over the last year or so, they tended to be for use in recessed lighting or for replacing lower-output incandescents.

Now they're being produced by major lighting companies, including Philips and Sylvania, and are being backed by major retailers, including Home Depot and Lowe's.

Lowe's started selling Sylvania's 60-watt-equivalent bulb online late last year and recently began offering it in its stores. In addition to the Philips bulb, Home Depot has begun selling a 60-watt-equivalent LED bulb from Lighting Science Group Corp. in some of its stores under its house brand, EcoSmart.

In recent months, I've been testing both the Philips and the EcoSmart bulbs. The best thing I can say about them is that as strange as they may look — the Philips bulb has yellow glass segmented by three metal grooves and the EcoSmart bulb has what looks to be a squashed glass head — the light they give off is unremarkable. It's bright and warm, but, to my eye at least, basically indistinguishable from what would be produced by an incandescent light.

The bulbs give off more light — measured in lumens — than a standard 60-watt bulb. And the coatings used on their glass are designed to filter the light they emit so that it appears more "natural."

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