I live in a mid-century modern rancher, and have gone to great lengths to preserve its character. One nice side benefit of this is incandescents are everywhere, often in locations where the bulb itself is visible.

Recently I’ve noticed visitors to our house commenting on the bulbs themselves. I don’t make it obvious that I collect them, so the comments are organic. They’ve been overwhelmingly positive and have led to some interesting conversations.

I’ve had people reminisce about the “old days” when incandescents were common, others like to talk about the politics of the ban, some ask where I got them and if I can spare any, and frequently the quality and warmth of the light gets mentioned. In the latter case, the person is often unaware that incandescents are being used, and the conversation invariably steers towards how much the newer stuff sucks.

Despite all the news articles painting incandescents as horrible, inefficient relics of the past, the reality I’ve observed is that very few people actually feel that way. Most of the time, I’ll hear a balanced take on the situation, with a preference towards LEDs for general lighting, but a desire to use incandescents for table or mood lighting.

Often I’ll send a pack or two of incandescents home with visitors, along with tips on how to acquire more. Given my personal observations, it appears that there is still a healthy demand for the “old fashioned” bulbs, and had they not been banned, would peacefully coexist among LEDs and fluorescents.

Anyone else have similar observations or encounters? I live in a very progressive part of the US, and quite frankly expected some pushback about my lighting choices. The fact that there has been virtually none is a very encouraging sign!

Interesting experience, I can not relate. People here seem to just buy whatever is on the shelves and slap them in wherever, even if it doesn't match the color or external look of the old bulb. Nobody even notices, and it is pretty disappointing. I have seen combinations of incandescent, CFL, and LED all in one fixture with visible bulbs, and nobody ever seems to care. I wish I lived in an area that cared!

I think most general consumers simply do not care about quality of light - but like you I receive similar comments when people visit my home (even being unaware of my interest) that the rooms are extremely well lit with unusual warmth.  People do not realise how good lighting can be until experiencing it. 

I am especially pleased to hear such reactions since in fact now eliminating virtually all incandescents from my home lighting.  But I made my own LED retrofits with colour rendering index above 97, and copying the real circa 2500K of low wattage incandescents vs the unpleasantly high 2700K that was ubiquitously claimed for almost all GLS lamps - but in practice applied only to the higher wattages.  I find it unfortunate that the big manufacturers all copied that 2700K spec for their LED retrofits - and in many cases are in fact closer to 2800K so as to make a small cost saving and efficacy boost.  I have tried pushing the lower CCT and higher CRI versions but since the average consumer has no idea what that means, and manufacturers also don’t want to promote it due to the higher cost and lower efficacy, the quality of home lighting has for most people suffered a massive backward step since the LED revolution.