I count up the bulbs and types I need and order - I always order extras and some other also.. Works out cheaper in the long run and then will have extras to play with..

I color match inserts and experiment with the GI

This is good advice. I also advise examining those bulbs under the playfield to determine the base styles, some games mix types and I often get caught with having the right color, but needing a 44/47 bayonet style or vice-versa because I didn't take enough time to research which base was needed where.

be sure to buy extras, some leds are out right out the box. but yes cheaper to piece together and buy a variety

I found that color matching LEDs with inserts that are blue and green really help to make those inserts pop.

however, for inserts that are on the other end of the spectrum (yellow, amber, orange and red) you really want to play around with your options (possibly using cool or warm white and lighter colors instead).

I found that using orange LEDs under an orange insert makes the insert appear darker (almost red), so I started experimenting with the following:
white or yellow LEDs under yellow and amber inserts
white or yellow LEDs under orange inserts
white, yellow or orange LEDs under red inserts

and it also depends on if you have yellow, amber, orange and red inserts next to one another

As for buying, I figure out my them first, then bulk the theme and buy sample kits as fillers..

For example, DM is a blue machine, Shadow is purple/pink, WCS is vivid colors..

So I would pick up a 25 pack of frosted blues, purple, pink, a couple 50 packs of warm white and cool/natural white and a few bags of samples. Do the DM and Shadow, use the rest to color match the WCS.

Then do a rough inventory, and when you make another order to cover your 4th machine, add in the missing sinlges for the first 3.

But then you have a small tacklebox of leds you can use for playing around or your next game.

Don't forget that you can get creative and use ANY colors that you want. On my F-14 Tomcat, the previous owner installed orange LEDs behind the targets. I would have never thought to do that, and it looks great so I have left it that way. There is also a random color changer bulb under the hot streak insert that is pretty cool.

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I say go for extras and things you're really curious about.
You'll probably use them eventually anyways when you find a home for them.
Try new things and play around with it. It is a hobby after all.

Also, it's probably best not to buy a kit, some places add extra charge for that.

If I was just starting out with no LED inventory and a few machines to play with, I'd probably go this route:

http://www.cometpinball.com/product-p/150-pack-starter.htm

Definitely know what style bulbs you need and have an idea if you want to color code, if you want warm or cool white, if you need some bigger/more intense bulbs, and always order an extra or few. It is literally the adult version of playing with a Lite Brite, so just have fun and do what you like.

Get a few 100 Warm Whites, you will use more of those than any other color.

They look better under Yellow, Orange or Amber inserts, than matching the LED color.

They also tend to look better in the backbox lighting, than having everything washed out with the Cool Whites.

For most normal size inserts, single LED bulbs are the correct brightness. Don't make the beginner mistake of putting super brights under all the inserts and loosing playability.

Also, don't make the beginner mistake of making one patch of the playfield Green, one section Blue, one section Red - that is called Clown Puke.

Here's a detailed write-up of one guy's approach to picking LEDs, which I found helpful in putting together my first LED order (haven't installed them yet so it remains to be seen if I'll agree with his take on color choice, etc., but nice to see someone's thought process clearly spelled out):
http://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/choosing-leds#post-1177708

I started out buying the kits and got an idea of what I liked and did not like. That really helped. I use pinballbulbs.com led game kits. I like the color schemes they put together. You will not like them if you want your game to look original.

Vid1900 is right, buy a lot of warm whites. You will also want to stock up on cool whites.

Fosaisu provided a great link. Perfect link to get some standard guidelines on how to replace LEDs

I bought a 555 LED sample kit from PinballLife and it was a great way to figure out what I wanted where. In some cases, I only needed one of a particular type, so it stayed where I liked it. You end up with lots of extras this way, but they've already come in handy for me.

I too used the stickied thread here as a starting point, especially the bit about when to use warm whites and when to use cool whites.

Definitely spend the time to figure out what you need, at least from a different socket standpoint.

If you try to take the lazy way out, your LEDs will most likely make your machine look like an overbearing Christmas Tree.

Well Said!

Yes, and the safest way to avoid this is to use mostly warm white or cool white LEDs for the GI. A few colored bulb under some plastics to highlight the color, but try to avoid putting a lot of colored LEDs together in clumps in GI. Otherwise the Christmas Tree look is likely.

It's hard to do at first. You have to get really familiar with your machine and it is possible to miss a few general illumination bulbs. The inserts you can find in the manual as well as the flashers, backbox is easy. Just order extra G.I bulbs after you think you counted them all. Burned out bulbs can pop up in the weirdest places when removing stuff from the field.

I just LED'd the inserts in my Getaway, which was the first time I've used LEDs. I picked up a few bulbs at the Ohio show from a couple different manufacturers, then made my own sample kits from others. I picked the types that I thought looked best in my game. One thing to keep in mind is to use regular LEDs in different insert locations to check for ghosting. That way, you can figure out how many non-ghosting bulbs you'll need. Other than that, I went through and made a list of each color and base type that I needed. I don't like anything too bright, so I went with warm white bulbs for orange, yellow, and white inserts, green and red to color match, and pink for amber inserts. I know the last one sounds wierd but it looks pretty good. All of them have frosted domes. This page was helpful to parse all the different types of LEDs: http://www.cometpinball.com/category-s/1825.htm

For what it's worth, I went with bulbs from www.pinballbulbs.com and did the inserts only. I thought about doing the GI, but I don't want to turn off GI dimming and lose that part of the light show.