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Lights hand the hidden attacker your position and blind you to everything not in the lights beam. A headlight would be suicidal and eliminate any night vision, forget loosing the sights post-shoot this is worse.

To get a feel for the advantage and limitation of tritium sights try using your sights outdoors at night in a controlled environment. As an example, you most likely are not going to be accosted under a street lamp but near the shadows. The indexing and accuracy provided by night sights is substantial. With the Christmas lighting now it is rather bright around even without streetlights but is still too dark at night to see your sights without tritium lamps in the sights. Even old ones provide some indexing capability, but new ones are awesome.

In the house is similar but with other safety issues, depending upon how much you control the environment and how may people live in the residence. For example my wife goes about the house with every light on, while I never turn on the lights at night. Consequently, I know if I have anyone moving around at night in the dark it is someone who doesn't belong there and the id becomes less important. This thread was not about dealing with intruders but the efficacy of tritium sights. They are very effective but your individual installation may generate other issues due to your installation options related to your weapon choice, some sights are better than others due to market place variety of offerings or limitations.

Back in 2011 it was $18/lamp if they were Trijicon lamps plus shipping.

Tritium are very effective in dim lighting especially against a dark background. Otherwise you have a difficult time lining up your sights. I did a low light match and it really made a difference. The dark unlit sights compared to tritium inserts is substantial. At minimum have tritium in the front sight. It can keep the cost down if you have several to keep up to date. The front sight is critical. I also tend to dislike the 3 dot systems, too many dots to keep track of and going in the wrong direction. I prefer sights with vertical orientation and just two dots, then mis-alignments are just vertical (off up or down) and against a aggressor vertical precision is not required just being on centerline is important.

I have gotten new inserts for sights by sending them to Trijicon, it is just a couple of weeks turn around and then you have another 10 years.