LED's are available in various color temperatures, including 2700K (commonly referred to as 'warm white' which is basically the temperature of incandescent). It's true that the dollar-bin Chinese LED's have all sorts of bad characteristics that used to be associated with all things LED - pale color, bad spread, bad (or no) dimming capabilities, etc.
It's 2015 though - take a 20$ Philips Master LED for example (I decided upon those for myself so I looked into them more heavily; I have about 20 in use now, with another few boxes in my basement awaiting installation). The GU10 socket halogen-replacement version is available in 3 temperatures and 3 spread bundles, has a 20k burn hour rating (vs 1-2k for incandescent!) and can be dimmed very well using a 50$ leading edge electronic dimmer.
I'm no tree hugger - even purely economical (apart from the convenience of not having to replace lamps every year), in 2015 it doesn't make any economic sense to buy incandescent (in those places where it's possible to buy them at all...) for all purposes where the light is used on a 'regular' basis (more than an hour a day or so).
Of course it does require an initial 'investment'. But one that would be spread over 1 or 2 years - the normal replacement cycle of incandescent bulbs. Throwing out working incandescent bulbs to replace them with LED is not rational either, of course.
Color temperature is nowhere near everything. Or rather, it would be, were LEDs actually anywhere near a blackbody in terms of radiation output over the visible spectrum. But they aren't. Nowhere near.
There is no every-day use case where the difference in light perception from an incandescent bulb is different, or even distinguishable without measurement, from an LED bulb. Feel free to try it yourself in a light studio, or otherwise, please cite any studies with modern lamps that conclude that the 'light quality' (by whatever metric) of an incandescent bulb is higher (that is, 'higher' as in 'makes a material difference for normal use cases', not 'in the lab using our spectrometer we measured a difference').
As always, there are people (analogous to 'vinyl produce a richer sound' idiots) who have 'opinions' on light quality, but well, we all know what they say about 'opinions'. In 2015, it's plain nonsense to take 'light quality' as a reason not to use LED light for domestic purposes, full stop.
The subjective experience of a home lit with incandescents is very different than one lit with LEDs. I don't care if the color temperature is the same. Things just look different. The bulbs cast their light differently.
There may not be a difference in "light quality", photons are photons, but if you convert a home from one to the other things will look different, and you may prefer one way or the other.
And don't forget about fixtures that were designed to work with clear incandescent bulbs for aesthetic reasons. LED bulbs will look downright hideous in those even when the lights are off.
There are people who like how vinyl sounds better because they like the hiss and the pops, not because they fall for audiophile silliness. The same holds for lighting.
Yes, but being unwilling to spend 1 day adjusting to a different look is a pretty silly reason to continue to run a bunch of spaceheaters in your house that, as a byproduct, happen to produce some light.
I don't like the "warm" light from LEDs, either, which is 2700-3000K. However, now I use 4500K "natural/neutral light" LEDs. I can't describe how much nicer it is than incandescent light.
It's "sunny middle of the day" light. It's brilliant and I love it. I could never use anything else now. Just make sure it's 4500k.
I thought so too until I discovered the Philips Corepro bulbs. I replaced every single bulb in my house with them last year. They're a massive improvement on the CFLs we had before. The only thing that took some getting used to was the lack of light shining upwards - ie illuminating the ceilings.
(I know this reads like a sales pitch but I am genuinely just a fan)
In my experience, while it's true its hard to find the right LEDs, it's certainly not impossible. Try some out - you might be surprised. The biggest challenge is that most of what's sold as "warm white" is nothing of the sort, and you might not be able to pick the cheapest LEDs if you're picky about the colour.
There are LED bulbs with very high CRI scores now. Before those existed it did indeed make sense not to switch to CFL or LED. (Though halogen/xenon make more sense than pure incandescent.)
