Should I get LED light bulbs?
The world of energy saving is a complicated one, there are probably about a million different ways that you can save energy in your home. You could turn down your thermostat a degree, you could install thermostatic valves on your radiators, or number one choice of all is to install energy saving bulbs.
The most common (and cheapest) type is the standard compact fluorescent. You know the ones, the twirly ones or stick shaped ones that take about a year to warm up once you turn them on. I really don't like them that much, they are better than they used to be, but they are not great. My new preferred type of bulb is the LED bulb, they offer great lighting and massive energy savings.
CFL vs LED
The main difference between a compact fluorescent and an LED is energy consumption. Your average compact fluorescent will use about 11W or so, an equivalent LED bulb that produces the same amount of light, will use about 3W. An LED bulb will also last longer, in most cases about 30,000 hours of use. Assuming you use your bulb for about 4 hours a day, that equates to 7,500 days of usage, that's 20 years before you need to get a new light bulb.
The other main advantage of an LED bulb is that it's instant on, no more warming up, an LED is on and working at full brightness in milliseconds.
And finally, you can get a wider choice of colour temperature which means you can choose to have the nice warm orange like colour of a normal traditional incandescent without the energy consumption. No more harsh white lights of an energy saving bulb (once it warms up of course!).
Cost
I know what you're thinking, aren't LED bulbs expensive? Yes, they are expensive. In fact they cost probably 10 times as much as a compact fluorescent. But they also last 10 times longer so perhaps it's not so bad if you spread the cost out.
In my mind though I have to spend some money on the bulbs sure, but once I've spent it the money is gone, unlike a business I don't really care about RoI, what I'm interested in is the bill from nPower being less each month. If you do the math it will be a long time before I see a return, but a month after buying the bulbs that purchase isn't in my mind, the bill being lower is in my mind, and a lower bill means for a happy me.
If you have some spare cash, say £30-50 then swapping the main lightbulbs you use each day could result in a 60% or greater reduction in energy usage from lighting. And most your energy consumption will be from lighting most likely.
Complicated to install?
LED bulbs are simple and easy to install, nothing special at all to consider really. Like a compact fluorescent type, you just buy the correct fitting, so bayonet or Edison or even small Edison and just swap the bulbs over. If you have a dimmer switch you just need to make sure you buy a dimmable (sometimes called dimmerable) bulb.
And finally, make sure to buy quality. LED bulbs like the one in the picture should have a fairly big heat sink, it should feel heavy for a bulb, if it doesn't feel heavy and have a big heat sink then it probably isn't very good quality, so don't buy it. Do yourself a favour, buy quality bulbs.
Conclusions
I really like LED bulbs, I think that the prices are going to come down, and the quality is only going to improve. Only 12 months ago LED bulbs wouldn't have been considered suitable for a home, but today I can buy any of hundreds of available types and they are great quality. If you want a quality light in your home with superb energy savings then LED is definitely for you.