Recently,Panasonic has won a Good Design award for an LED bulb which mimics the look of traditional incandescent bulbs while offering the energy efficiency of LED technology.

According to the Good Design Award, Panasonic's managed to engineer around LEDs two main challenges: spreading the light around and casting a warm tint onto its surroundings. LEDs are often very cool light sources, which looks strange to our incandescent-trained eyes. Supposedly Panasonic's cracked that problem.

The light produced is not reminiscent of an LED bulb but has a warm richness and provides a familiar, everyday lightsource. It is vital that particular care be taken in developing bulbs that gives consideration to the psychological dimension of lighting.

However, these things aren't actually on the market. Fingers crossed for Panasonic to release them--even if they don't, it's encouraging to see LED bulbs inch closer to a significant market presence.