Led bulb temperature

I replaced all 300+ incandescent bulbs in my house with LED bulbs (see My adventures in LED home lighting). I measured the heat sink temps on a lot of bulbs (6-25W). They run from 60-90 degrees C. The highest temps were on a 6 watt Chinese PAR20 and PAR16 bulb (90C) and the Sylvania 10 watt PAR16 bulb (88C). All these were in recessed ceiling fixture cans.

A friend of mine lit up a cigarette below one of the Sylvania 18 watt LED bulbs. When the smoke got about 2 feet below it, it was like a vacuum cleaner sucked it up into the bulb. They did some good heat sink/air flow design work.

And if you are using CFL lights, they have a driver in them also. And CFL drivers tend to be ubber-crappy-cheap-ass designs. I’d be much more worried about them than LED drivers. And I have absolutely no worries about the drivers in LED bulbs from well known brand name makers. In most of bulbs that I disassembled, the driver was potted in silicone rubber.

BTW, a halogen capsule can run at over 800C!. Those little 50 watt MR16 halogens are nasty, mean, little creatures.