The Historic Homeowner's Guide to Using LED Bulbs to Light Your Home

By Natasha Cohen | December 5, 2025

When you live in a historic home, you regularly navigate tradeoffs between the vintage character you love and the realities of contemporary living. But lighting doesn’t need to—and shouldn't—be one of those compromises. Choose the wrong LED bulbs and your Victorian parlor feels like a dentist’s waiting room. Your Storybook Cottage living room loses its soul. The character you fell in love with simply vanishes in the wrong light. Choose the right LEDs, and your home glows exactly as it was designed to—warm, inviting, authentic.

Here's how to get it right.

First, incandescent bulbs, that staple of lighting from the early 20th century onward, are being phased out across the country. They’re no longer available for purchase, and if you’re stockpiling them, it’s okay to move on. The wheel of progress keeps spinning and the national shift is underway as we speak. In their place there is a variety of newfangled LED technologies. They're not all a perfect match out of the box for your historic home, but it's easy to choose beautifully compatible options when you know what to look for.

There are some benefits to making the switch, too. LEDs use up to 90% less electricity than incandescent bulbs and usually last 15,000 to 25,000 hours compared to a tungsten bulb's 1,000-hour average. They produce significantly less heat which creates a safer experience overall.

Safer bulbs that last longer mean lower overall energy consumption and fewer bulbs in landfills over time. That's a good thing. And while quality LED bulbs will cost more up front, their longevity and efficiency typically pays off in year one.

One problem you might encounter: Older dimmer switches weren't designed for LED technology. If you experience flickering or buzzing, replace your dimmer switches with LED-compatible versions. Most electricians can handle the swap in minutes, and modern LED dimmers work beautifully.

LED bulbs come in several distinct shapes, glass finishes, and filament styles. Understanding what's available helps you choose bulbs that match your fixture design and era.

A19 - The classic pear-shaped bulb most people think of as standard. Works in most fixtures with medium (E26) bases.

A15 – Same shape and base as the A19 at about two-thirds the size

Flame-tip / Candle-tip - Elongated bulbs with a pointed or flame-shaped tip, designed to evoke candles and gas lighting. Available with medium (E26) or candelabra (E12) bases.

Globe - Spherical bulbs in various sizes (G16, G25, G40), often used in bathroom vanities or decorative fixtures.

Tube - Cylindrical bulbs that come in different lengths and diameters, slightly more common in Mid-Century and industrial fixtures.

Clear glass - Transparent glass that exposes the internal LED components or decorative filament arrangements.

Frosted glass - Translucent white coating that diffuses light and conceals the LED components inside.

Clear glass - Transparent glass that exposes the internal LED components or decorative filament arrangements.

Frosted glass - Translucent white coating that diffuses light and conceals the LED components inside.

E26 (Medium) - Standard screw base used in most household fixtures.

E12 (Candelabra) - Smaller screw base common in chandeliers, sconces, and decorative fixtures.

Color temperature is the tendency of a bulb to produce a warmer (red, orange, yellow) toned light or a cooler (blue, green) toned light. The scale is measured in units called Kelvins (K). They’re slightly counterintuitive, in that lower numbers mean warmer color temperature and vice versa. Just remember: 2700K is warm and cozy; 6000K is roughly neutral, and anything higher is cold and clinical.

Traditional incandescent bulbs with a tungsten filament gave off a warm glow (2700K on the scale) that defined home lighting for the entire 20th century.

Contemporary lighting design has shifted toward cooler temperatures, especially in commercial and public spaces where architects and designers are usually specifying 4000K-5500K. That’s a range of color temperature that feels closer to "neutral" white or the blue of bright daylight. Design magazines now also frequently showcase residential interiors lit with cool white LEDs.

Ignore that. Contemporary ‘bright white’ LEDs at 4000K-5500K might make a hospital hallway feel clean and efficient. In your historic living room, they make you feel like you're under interrogation or about to go under the knife. The warm glow of 2700K wraps your spaces in cozy authenticity.

Walk past your neighbors' homes on an evening stroll. Notice how the windows glow invitingly against the cool blue evening sky—they feel alive, occupied, welcoming. The warmth of traditional tungsten lighting mimics the firelight we humans have been drawn to for millennia. When shopping, ignore anything labeled "cool white," "bright white," or "daylight." Look specifically for 2200K, 2700K or 3000K, sometimes labeled "warm white" or "soft white."

Contemporary designers will often recommend something cooler for your kitchen, office, bathroom and closets because these are 'task-oriented' spaces, that is, where more work is happening. If you're looking to keep the same feel as the era of your home, we disagree. Keep to the 2200K-3000K range throughout most of your home, with these caveats:

• In your kitchen, don’t go below 2700K. Anything warmer will affect your cooking, as all of your food will have a warmer tone, and meat will still look raw even after it’s fully cooked. We also recommend white or slightly off-white glass and shades rather than anything golden in the kitchen to avoid this same issue.
• In your bathroom and closets opt for something daylight balanced around 5000K-6000K so that when you’re choosing your wardrobe and getting ready for the day you’ll see what you look like in something closer to daylight.

Over the 19th and 20th centuries residential lighting evolved through three major technological shifts. Understanding which era your home was built in helps you choose appropriate LED brightness levels and bulb styles. Never sacrifice your ability to easily live in your home and navigate its spaces. These breakdowns suggest how to create a historic mood, especially if you’re using dimmers.

Candles and gas fixtures produced warm, flickering light with very low output and dramatic shadows. If your home was built during this era—whether a sweeping Second Empire or a ranch homestead—the lighting was intimate and specifically localized in a space.

Carbon filament bulbs (Edison's carbonized bamboo filament was patented in 1880) produced warm light similar to a gas flame but with steadier output. However, there was no standardization and quality ranged widely. Homes from this period—later Victorians, Edwardians and early bungalows—featured fixtures that may have been converted from gas to electric. You’re still looking at creating pools of light by layering ambient, task and accent lighting throughout a room.

Tungsten filament bulbs revolutionized home lighting after 1905, offering dramatically improved efficiency and reliability compared to carbon filament predecessors. It also scared some of the early adopters. But this nearly century-long era saw profound changes in how Americans lit their homes—from the concentrated pools of light in late-19^th-to-early-20th-century interiors to the more uniform brightness of late-century recessed lighting.

In the early decades (1905-1930s), electric lighting was still relatively expensive, and homes featured fewer fixtures strategically placed. A Craftsman living room might have an art glass chandelier creating warm illumination over the conversation area, with perhaps a table lamp for a reading nook. The contrast between illuminated and shadowed areas was dramatic and intentional—creating intimate zones within larger spaces. Tudor Revival and Spanish Colonial homes sometimes embraced even lower light levels to maintain their romantic, Old World character.

As the 20^th century progressed electricity became universal and affordable and the New Dea’s Rural Electrification Act program pushed electricity into previously isolated areas. Lighting shifted toward more fixtures per room and slightly higher overall brightness. An Art Deco, Streamline Moderne or a Mid-Century Modern home celebrated electric light and the promise of a utopian future with fixtures designed to bounce illumination off chrome and other beautifully polished and lacquered surfaces.

Not sure which era your home falls into or what fixtures would work best? We can help you identify your home's architectural period and recommend appropriate lighting. Contact us for guidance.

Whatever you do, avoid buying fixtures with integrated LEDs. This is the biggest mistake you can make when lighting your historic home, and manufacturers are hoping you'll make it.

In that case, the LED technology that provides illumination is hardwired into the fixture. When integrated LEDs fail—and they do fail—your entire fixture becomes worthless unless you want to take it apart and find the replacement unit to install. You can't replace the bulb only because the technology is permanently built in. Unless you find the right replacement, tear your fixture to parts, replace the chip and then reassemble your fixture, it becomes a paperweight.

But problems with integrated LEDs usually start before failure. They often have inconsistent light output—sometimes too bright, sometimes too dim, and little to no flexibility to adjust.

The color temperature may shift, too. Mass-market integrated LEDs typically have a lower CRI (Color Rendering Index), which means the color of the objects being illuminated by the LED are not as close to their ‘true’ color.

Contemporary manufacturers love integrated LEDs because they guarantee you'll need to buy a whole new fixture in a handful of years or less. It's planned obsolescence disguised as convenience. At Old California, we refuse to offer them because we build lighting to last generations, not until the warranty expires. Instead, we supply 2700K bulbs with a vintage look with every fixture we make.

Always choose fixtures with standard sockets where you can replace bulbs.

One more added benefit of changeable bulbs over integrated systems: bright hotspots! Historic lighting wasn't evenly lit using panels or banks of LEDs, it had one or more bulbs that created hotspots behind the glass or diffuser. That's not wrong. That's the look! Ditching integrated options keeps your lighting looking authentic to its period.

Every Old California light fixture comes with replaceable sockets and includes 2700K LED bulbs—because we build for generations, not until the warranty expires. Shop our collections.

You make tradeoffs between vintage charm and contemporary living every day in your historic home. But lighting shouldn't be one of them. The right LED choices let you embrace modern efficiency while preserving the warm, dramatic character your home was designed around.

Walking into a big-box store and facing walls of LED bulb options—all with their boxes listing different specs and making different claims—can be confusing. And you didn’t pour money into your historic home just to ruin it with harsh, institutional lighting. The good news? Once you know what to look for, choosing the right LEDs is easy peasey.

Picture this: It's a cold winter evening and you've just turned on the lights in your living room. Warm light illuminates the architectural details your home's builders crafted with such care. Friends settling into your space comment on how inviting it feels, how the light just makes the room come alive. That's what the right LED choices deliver: modern efficiency that honors century-old craftsmanship. Your home looks and feels exactly as it should. As it was always meant to. As it did when the original owners laughed, cried and celebrated in those same rooms.

Ready to light your historic home the right way? Shop period-perfect lighting designed for homes like yours or reach out if you need guidance choosing the right fixtures and bulbs for your era. Your home's authentic character is worth getting right, and Old California is here to help you.

• How did the light bulb lead the way when it comes to consumer goods that don't last as long or are impossible to repair? Read the history here.
• Not sure what details make different eras disticnt? Read our guides to help you identify common historic styles:
  • Craftsman or Arts & Crafts
• What challenges do designers and architects face in a historic home? Find out here.