Adding incandescent to LED lighting

[Mushfarmer]

My brother had a good point today that incandescent is about 20% in the far red spectrum, it is also where it is highest in intensity. Would a incandescent be more efficient at producing far red than a actual far red (730-740nm) LED chip for equivalent wattage? I tried finding some datasheets on the radiant flux of far red leds but had no luck.

 

[fanleaf]

Would a incandescent be more efficient at producing far red than a actual far red (730-740nm) LED chip for equivalent wattage?

No, not a chance. Most, and I mean most of the power an incandescent uses is turned into heat. An incandescent light bulb is a glorified toaster oven. Think about it. A regular light bulb is almost nothing but an electrical short. For an example take a 9 volt battery and put a strip of tin foil over the tabs for a few seconds and you will see that nothing but heat is generated right? Now, trade that piece of tin foil in for a tiny tiny piece of wire. What will happen is tons of heat generated and a little bit of light. That's almost exactly what an incandescent bulb is. You can look inside it and see it's just a short between the 2 poles.

While I realize Lumens is not the best for figuring out needed light it gives a really easy comparison here.
a 40W light bulb produces on average 450 lumens and 450 lumens is also what 1 single 4-5W LED produces
A 100W light bulb produces 1600 lumens and so can 20W or less LED.

Average heat emitted from a light bulb is 85 btu's per hour
Average heat emitted from LED of same light output is 3.4 btu's per hour

Incandescent bulbs are much less efficient than most other types of electric lighting, incandescent bulbs convert less than 5% of the energy they use into visible light.