I am considering replacing the bulbs on my 2019 F150 and am looking for feedback.  I am looking to go with bright white lights.  

How many bulbs are used for the lights?  Running lights, low beams, high beams, fog lights.  Is that 4 bulbs, or do some of the bulbs run 'double duty'?  I would like to replace them all to keep some from being white and others orange.
What brands should I look at?
Does it make more sense to replace the whole light unit rather than the bulbs?
Any caveats to doing this?

If they are H4 style halogens, you can get halogens that put out an obscene (and likely illegal in your area) amount of light - and also heat. The brightest ones can reportedly melt headlight housings that are anythign other than metal and glass.  Flosser (germany), Hella, Osram, Phillips - check out their online catalogs.

The uber bright ones run from around 100-145 watts for high beam (those would be the ones that can melt plastic housings).

For other style bulbs, I don't know, haven't looked for them.

Light color / temperature is actually far less important than the coverage pattern any given light puts out.

Here, have a good dig on this place: http://www.danielsternlighting.com/

I definitely don't want to melt the housing. Or be so bright it's illegal. Just trying to get better visibility at night.

What's the big difference between halogen and led?

I installed beamtech LED lights off amazon. They need to be oriented correctly and have the same cutoffs as the replaced halogen bulbs.

They were both brighter and whiter. Less eye strain as well when driving to work in the early AM.

If you want to do it right, put in a set of headlights from a higher trim truck that came with factory LED lights. It's not cheap, but it will be worth it. You need the headlight assembly's and a conversion harness to make it all work.

People that put bright bulbs in halogen reflector headlight housings suck.

Did you install low beams only?

Leds use less wattage for equivalent light output.

That said, the highest rated ones on those can run so hot they need active cooling too.

The real fly in the ointment is that the reflector and the lenses are designed for a particular pattern of light input.

For example:



And LED would be different from those. For sealed beam, this obviously wouldn't apply.

So, you either track down a set made to fit your vehicle with the housing and bulb type designed for each other ... or you get the highest output bulb for your housing type that you are willing (and able safely) to run. (see here) The latter is likely to be easier.  Needless to say if your headlight lenses are faded or dirty, clean 'em.


If you are handy with a voltmeter, you can put it on DC volts, go turn your car on, and turn on the headlights on low beam with the car idling to see how many volts are at the headlight plug, with the headlights plugged in (put the probes in the back of the plug). After that, with it idling, turn on every single electrical thing you can, flip your headlights to high beam, and see how many volts you're getting.

If it's anything less than 12.6, you can rewire things to bring the voltage up. Doing that will increase the output of your headlights; usually noticeably. See here for an example: http://www.danielsternlighting.com/tech/relays/relays.html

If you aren't handy with wiring, you might be able to buy a plug and play "headlight brightener" kit, which should consist of lower gauge (fatter) wires and a set of relays and the correct plugs. Don't do so without first having tested to see what the voltage is right at the headlight plug with the headlights plugged in and running, as outlined above ... unless you like throwing away money.

This right here.  

There's a special place in hell for people who throw LED bulbs in stock halogen housings...

So is this as easy as going to rock auto or do I need to scour eBay and Craigslist? I see Amazon has some non oem brands

You can try eBay, your local dealer, or one of the big online part houses. There are guys on the forums making harnesses so it can be plug and play (mostly). It's gonna take a little digging and leg work, and money, but the result will be factory LEDs and your truck won't be ghetto.

https://www.f150forum.com/f118/halogen-oem-led-headlights-forscan-way-394074/

lol, why? (I don't).  I have one car with Stock HIDs and an old Nissan with actual glass headlights with a standard halogen bulb.  Back in the day when HID's were the thing, I installed drop-in HID's w/ ballast and never had an issue or complaint, and had much better visibility.

I would also be interested in hearing the explanation

Beam scatter.

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Factory LED headlights don't look like that, they have a crisp cutoff line. So with the pattern above you either aim the headlights down or blind oncoming drivers because of the excess spill of light above where it should be.

This is a BMW headlight pattern for comparison.

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