Which site is the best to buy led lights from?

SailorSoulutions

Sailor Solutions is a great company, but their Senisbulbs can only be used in some fixtures and I find them hard to handle:

http://www.sailorssolutions.com/

I think that there are lots of other good replacement bulbs, and particularly like the enclosed types that Imtra distributes. Good source is Sailor Sam's:

http://www.sailorsams.com/

But I don't think we've yet seen the ideal switched marine LED interior light fixture. I think it will have very bright LEDs for task work with dimming to take it down to normal living and night running modes.

If you are in the market for fixtures, I highly recommend Alpenglow. They have made super quality florescent fixtures for years, but they have finally decided that LED technology has become mature enough. Their reading light is a thing of beauty and their overhead LED lights are just great. They are not cheap, but their stuff is hand made and not really more expensive than Imtra and the like. Plus they are super nice to work with.

http://www.alpenglowlights.com/

I was disappointing in the cost and the large size of light fixtures for home use, especially in regards to high hats. The products that would be as bright as I desired were huge as well as expensive. I really don't want to install 6" high hats in my home.

Looking towards the future, I see two trends that made me go for smaller fixtures now and upgrade later:

1. The LED products available now that are designed to convert standard fixtures, although not bright enough either, has me hopeful if I go with inexpensive fixtures now I can retrofit them a few years in the future when something small and bright enough is available.

2. Wireless receivers being built into smart light bulbs is becoming an interesting feature worth holding off for.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-20063928-54.html

Have a look here:

http://www.ecoledlight.co.uk/

Switched LED product? My reccomendation is Prebit. I installed a couple of UB01-1 downlights and several EB15-3 "LED recessed light with HIGH-POWER LED" recessed say 35mm into the new headliner. Eyeball swiveling recessed Red/White LED. A nice unit, a bit spendy but top quality German engineering. (Tell yourself you'll burn a lot less diesel to get light.)

www.Prebit.de (Bought 'em from Calibra here in the UK)

At the risk of hijacking the thread, I'd like to explore a slightly different aspect of the LED light-fixture issue...

I currently have four cheap (and cheap-LOOKING) plastic "reading" lights in my cabin, two in the forward stateroom, and one on each side of the dinette. I'd like to replace them with some nicer lights, hopefully something which looks approximately similar to these:

http://baconsails.biz/brbeli.html

http://www.imtra.com/7587cdc6-01cc-4c54-91b8-993e69c8db18/lighting-light-fixtures-reading-chart-reading-detail.htm

That's the easy part, there are many possible choices, of which the above two represent the near-extremes of cost, from the $37 cheapie to the high-zoot IMTRA gold-plate special at nearly $400.

But of course, it's not quite that simple. What I really want is a fixture which:

1. - is either LED-based or easily convertible to LED via a replacement "bulb" insert, and...

2. - produces both white and red light on demand, and...

3. - has TWO power feeds, one each for each color light, so that ALL of the white lights can be remotely disabled by throwing a single switch/breaker, such as at the helm. A local On/Off (or On/Off/On) switch on each fixture is optional, but preferable.

One way this could be easily and cheaply implemented is by using a dual-contact bayonet socket such as would normally be used with a #1157 automotive taillight bulb:

http://www.bulbs.com/espec.aspx?ID=13557

at least presuming that a suitable bi-color LED replacement insert can be found.

But regardless of the "how", I cannot seem to find ANY suitable fixtures. For example, I just attended the Annapolis Boat Show; and while there I queried every lighting vendor I could find on this topic, and came up empty every time.

This SEEMS like such an obvious product, that I cannot understand why it isn't already available on every streetcorner.

Anybody have an idea?