Normal brightness of amber markers in headlight assembly?

I don't know if I can be all that helpful, as our headlight lenses are completely clear. Our side lights (as they are called here) are white. The indicators are orange, and that is done by way of an orange lamp. There are two different bulbs for each. The details are in the owner's manual:

 

Conventional incandescent light bulbs are always (well, when they're on) slowly 'boiling' metal off of the filament, and the metal vapor wafts around inside the bulb and some ends up on the inside of the glass.

When you look at one of these small bulbs with many many hours of operation on it, the glass can look really dark gray or, like, silvery black from the metal deposited on the inside. That'll make it a lot dimmer than it was when it was new.

 

The flash to Park lights are your turn signals much brighter the lil 194 markers even my led aren't that bright.

 

There is NO high-low on marker lamps, just the bulb's luminescent rating. I suppose you can have a bad ground, dimming the incandescent bulb's light output. That effectively acts like a resistor in the circuit. If you only live a few blocks from the ocean, that may be the issue. The salt air rusting your ground point.
You can check your bulbs and wiring, if you like - but I'm assuming it's a non-problem. IMHO: You should replace the 194's with it's LED equivalent, while your there, since they're cheap ($4 for 30x). That would be a planned preventive measure.
30x T10/194/168 White LED License Plate Interior Light Bulbs Super Bright 6500K | eBay

Good Luck....

 

Some of the LED retrofit bulbs have a bunch of LED chips pointing different ways. Some might work out well.

So far, I haven't gone down that rabbit hole with my 2010 ... the incandescents work well enough for these little incidental lights, so far I've only had to replace maybe three in the car's 16 years, and I actually have a bunch of spares accumulated over a lifetime of driving other cars that used them.

 

I replaced my interior incandescent bulbs with 6K wavelength LED's on all my cars. I'm getting old and those bulbs makes a big difference when your trying to read something. There's a reason why all new flashlights are LED's - brighter and longer battery life.

 

Sure, all my recently-purchased flashlights are LED. That's the way they were designed and built, and they work great.

My 2010 was designed and built with LEDs for most small sources inside ... thankfully, no more taking apart instrument panels to change little tiny light bulbs for indicators. They did still build it with incandescents for things like dome lights and many of the outside lights (but LEDs for tail and stop lights).

I get lots of ideas for projects I want to take on, and so far, selecting suitable LED retrofits to revise all of those original build choices just hasn't risen to the top of my list. Or particularly close to it.... Nothing against other people who want to.

If my dome light ever burns out, I might do something else there. It isn't subject to any of the "is it DOT street legal?" considerations that apply to the mandated outside lights.

I would still want it to fade gracefully the way the original does. Some LED retrofits will, and some won't.

 

That's weird; I think all the interior bulbs on my 21 Prime was incandescent. I didn't check the instrument cluster, but I'm pretty sure it's LED backlit. I think even the vanity mirror lamps was incandescent; I don't remember - since I did it so long ago.
I can say with certainty; if I open my door at night - people will be able to see my door marker lamps. I recall that they seem to be at least twice as bright as the old 194's - that I thought about putting red or amber film over them.

YMMV

 

My gen2 parked next to a gen3 of say 10 or 12 vintage you can tell the brightness of all my lights on car to the gen3 is quite noticable. Even in ceiling and visor locales . The trunk mite in my gen2 now actually lites the trunk

 

Yes; vast improvement in the trunk - with that single 194 on the passenger side wall. Roll back the cover to get some dome lamp action going. But the main reason for the change was those map lamps; once that was done all the other interior lamps just looked inferior - So I did them all for consistently sake. I believe almost all of them were 194/168 sockets except for the dome lamp. As I stated earlier; 30x for $4; so it was just labor. At that price; if I get a couple of duds - no big deal.

PS They are polarity based; so you need to test as you go. I had to reverse a few, but testing as I went - meant I didn't have to take it apart again. Dangle, making sure there's no shorting path - turn-on - then reassemble.

 

Yeah, I think my gen 3's interior dome, mirror, door, hatch lights are all incandescent still. But there's just a handful of those, a number that pales in comparison to all the indicator and illumination lights lighting up everything in the dash, steering wheel, dash switches and power button, armrest switches and so on. At around this age for the car I'm very thankful those are all LEDs. I've taken a gen 2 dash apart to change the light bulbs in the power button and shifter and park button and so on. Won't have to do that here.