I have a 5000+ square foot house. It was originally built around 1918 and was last renovated in 1999. The designer of that renovation had a lumen fetish. The house has well over 300 light bulbs, mostly recessed can lights. All the bulbs are on Lutron Diva dimmers. The power to the house tends to run rather high. Even 130V bulbs don't last long. I literally have a closet devoted to just light bulbs.
A rundown of the most common bulbs I have:
50W PAR20 500 lumen halogens
50W PAR16 400 lumen halogens (mostly illuminating artwork)
50W MR16 900 lumen, 12 volt halogens (more artwork and the livingroom)
75W BR38 reflector flood lights
Misc candelabra bulbs in chandeliers and the front porch
The front porch gates have 6 candelabra bulbs. The original owners used 60W bulbs. They are on at least 10 hours a night. Lets see... that's 150+ bucks a year for the electrons. I replaced those with some 3W LED bulbs which cost around 10 bucks a pop. After over three years, I have never had to replace any of them. Payback on electricity alone was less than 6 months.
My kitchen has 16 PAR20, 50 watt, 500 lumen halogen bulbs plus 6 MR16, 50 watt, 900 lumen 12 volt bulbs plus 6 small under-counter 14W halogen bulbs. I was replacing PAR20 bulbs at least once a week. And when one one bulb went, quite often it took a few others with it. Plus it often killed the $36 dimmer. Enough of that crap, I decided to try LED bulbs.
After a lot of looking around, the best cost/performance PAR20 dimable bulbs at the time were some Chinese made 6W, 380 lumen, warm white bulbs sold/supported/shipped in the US. I ordered a few at $20 ea to test. They seemed OK so I did the whole kitchen and part of my office... 400 bucks.
Then I started looking into what it would take to LED the whole house. CFL bulbs were out of the question. Crappy light, mercury, 3 zillion years to warm up, bogus lifetime when used in the real world. A little math said it would be over $16,000 to go LED if I bought the bulbs at places like Home Depot! Uhh, no thanks.
Then one day while trolling Ebay, I found a place that looks like they resell items returned to stores. They we listing lots of 8-12 LED bulbs in 8 watt PAR20, 15 watt PAR30, and 15/18/25W PAR38 sizes. The bulbs were mostly very high quality LSG/Sylvania/Ecosmart made in the USA. At the time, few people had noticed this seller and I snagged lots for $20-$60... many wound up less than the cost of the halogens/floods! It took about 6 months to snag enough bulbs to do the whole house. I think that I wound up spending around $1400 there.
Now I had all my PAR20/PAR30/PAR38 needs covered. What about those MR16/900 lumen bulbs. The brightest MR16 bulbs were around 300 lumens... that would just not do. It would take a 200 lumen/watt LED to be able to do 900 lumens in a MR16 form factor. You are limited to around 6 watts. The best home lighting LED bulbs are less than 60 lumens/watt. So I did what anybody would do... designed and built my own fixtures. I used some 1200 lumen Bridgelux arrays mounted on Nuventix heat sinks. They use a simple resistor ballast (which wound up being more efficient than an active driver. The cost wound up around $40 dollars a fixture. I built 36 fixtures. They hang down from the old recessed MR16 "eyeball" cans (the mod is totally reversible)
The PAR16 dimmable bulbs that shine on some artwork were a real problem. The best I could do were some more Chinese bulbs from the same supplier as the PAR20's in the kitchen. The light quality is not the best, but is accepible 40 bulbs at $20 ea... OUCH!
So, I wound up spending around $4000 dollars. I figure I can sell my old incandescents/halogens for a zillion bucks when they are banned. The light quality of the LED bulbs is VERY good. All were warm white in the 2700K-3000K range. I have had two bulbs fail. One Chinese PAR20 and one PAR38 Sylvania (popped internal fuse). I probably would have replaced 100 incandescent bulbs and 5 dimmers.