> cooling the LEDs enough

Maybe I am missing something from this conversation, but all of my LED bulbs produce far _less_ heat than incandescent bulbs. The lamp in my bedroom no longer keeps me warm!

Yes, but incandescent bulbs don't need to be cooled at all because they're just tungsten and glass. High powered LEDs require a heat sink to not damage the diode.

By cooling the issue is that LEDs and the driving electronics will become damaged with heat, while an incandescent has simple parts which can easily survive inside an oven. This matters when used in fixtures like recessed ceiling cans where there’s no ventilation. The LEDs just cook themselves while incandescents don’t care.

When my garage+office was built a few years ago, the electrician used a bunch of faux-recessed LED fixtures (the brand name is "I Can't Believe It's Not Recessed!", which is certainly memorable). They surface-mount over standard ceiling junction boxes, but appear similar to recessed lights once installed. We have ~20 of these fixtures, both interior and exterior. They're quiet, flicker-free, and have a great dimming curve (with the standard Z-wave dimmers I've used). We've had no failures so far after almost four years, so they've passed the leading edge of the bathtub curve.

I think it's much easier to design entire fixtures than retrofit bulbs, as there's much more control over heat dissipation and so on. Finding trusted manufacturers (and supply chains that resist counterfeits) is also extremely important.

The faux-recessed LED fixtures are a really interesting case because they're either going to be the most reliable LED in your house, or one of the least! This is because heat is the LED diode killer (as well as the power supplies driving the diodes)

Can lights have historically been an issue for insulation of houses, as they provide a channel for the warm ceiling air to enter the plenum space between floors or the attic. Thats bad for insulation, but actually amazing for a retrofitted LED light, because it's the only fixture that will provide airflow to cool it!

On the other hand, faux-recessed LEDs can also be installed directly on top of the ceiling drywall, without any penetration. Thats the worst case scenario for heat build up, as heat rises and it's completely trapped by the dish of the light and the ceiling.

Absolutely! The faux-recessed lights made it a ton easier to do air-sealing, which is now essential to pass mandatory blower-door tests.

You will find that you will need to search a bit harder to find an LED light that is rated to work with enclosed fixtures. Enclosed fixtures don't allow the same amount of cooling as a normal lamp.

But LEDs are very sensitive to heat, so even the small amount of heat will cause gradual dimming.

Simpler and better light, but bad energy efficiency.

Although, as was pointed out to me at some point, because LEDs are more efficient, people feel less guilty about having more of them; replacing 1x40 watt bulb with 8x5 watt LEDs means the net result is the same. I've got like 7 cute LED spotlights in my TV closet for example, I wouldn't have had that setup if I was forced to use incandescent lamps.

Energy efficiency wise, in cold weather it warms the apartment which is desirable in my case.

Little downside if you have electric heating, but if you have natural gas heating the electric heating is probably more expensive.

Jevons Paradox in action.

I've moved three times with one set of cheap LED bulbs without having to replace a single one. I'd have gone thorough dozens of incandescent bulbs in the same time period. I'd have also burned my hand on a few.

LEDs are definitely simpler than incandescent from a user perspective.