In the interests of doing my small part to prevent global warming, I’ve been attempting to replace all the incandescent lights in my house with compact fluorescents. The new versions are quite attractive, looking only slightly different from incandescents.
But every time I’ve installed a new light, I’ve been a bit disappointed. Most of them claim to consume only 15 watts, while producing the same luminescence as a 60-watt bulb. But when I turn on the new light, it always seems a little dimmer. What’s going on?
Since I have a three-bulb fixture in my kitchen, I decided to do a little experiment. I put a 40-watt incandescent bulb in one, a 15-watt CF in another, and a 60-watt incandescent in the third. I turned on the fixture, and voilà , not only was the CF dimmer than the 60-watter, it was dimmer than the 40-watter. I ran to get my digital camera to document this blatant example of false advertising. But when I took the picture, I was surprised at what I saw: on my camera’s preview screen, the CF bulb now appeared to be the brightest. What’s up with that? Then I looked up at the fixture and saw that it appeared brightest to the naked eye as well. Did my eyes deceive me before? Or…
AHA! Of course — the problem must be that CF lights take a minute or two to warm up. I turned off the lights for 5 minutes to let them cool down, then quickly flipped the switch on and snapped a photo. Here are the results:
The lights are in the following order, from left to right: 60-watt incandescent, 15-watt CF, and 40-watt incandescent. When warm, the CF appears to be the brightest. But when cold, the 60-watter is brighter (I confirmed this using the info pane in Photoshop, and I encourage you to do the same if you don’t believe me).
One other thing in the incandescent bulb’s favor: more even light — notice that the entire shade is illuminated, whereas for the CF bulb, there’s much less light at the top. Overall, incandescent might have a slight edge over CF, but at 1/4 the energy consumption, I’d say the difference is worth it.
One plea to the CF manufacturers: can you please start making 40- and 100-watt equivalent bulbs? And how about bulbs that are the exact dimensions of incandescant bulbs? I still have some fixtures that the CF bulbs don’t fit in.
A final suggestion — you might want to make a note on the label that the lights take a couple minutes to attain full brightness. That way, customers won’t be disappointed with they first turn on the lights.
I like the warm ambience and whiteness given off by a CF bulb and the energy savings is very worth
it. I also agree with you when you say they need to have a disclaimer. Good article.
i’ve had the same problem dave - we’ve gotten more used to it since we changed all the bulbs to energy saving ones - but we still have uplighters in some rooms
I have seen some higher wattage (up to 100-watt equivalent, which is a 27-watt CF) light bulbs at hardware stores such as Home Depot. However, they are quite large and would not fit into any tight fixtures. Then again, you hopefully weren’t putting a bulb that puts off that much heat energy into a very tight space anyway (unless it was an EZ Bake Oven).
Jason, thanks — the 100 watt fixture I need filled is quite large, so that may work!
I have some 100 watt equivelent CFs. I’ve seen 150 watt CFs at the grocery store. I also have a fixture with tight space. It tells you not to put in a bulb over 60 watts. I found a 75 watt CF that (barely) fits in it. It is clearly brighter than any 60 watt bulb. The thing is, it’s over my kitchen sink. There is no way that 60 watts is bright enough for that application. So CFs saved me. However, not all 75 watts CFs would fit in this fixture.
Some CFs take a couple seconds to come on. I would normally hate them. I’ve paired them up in fixtures with a fast acting CF. So you flick the switch, one comes on, then the other. I’ll try not to buy any more slow ones.
Something like 25% of your house electricity is lighting. Saving 75% of that brings to to 18% savings overall. Of course, all bets are off if you live in Death Valley and run air conditioning 24x7x365. But 18% seems like a win to me. CFs don’t cost THAT much, and in the long run pay for themselves. Why not?
You can save a similar amount of gas in your car by driving a little slower. My car gets 15% better mileage at 65 than 70. It is legal to drive 55 on any highway in the US. We could all start saving 15% everywhere.
I have been “off the grid” for about nine years now and used CFs all that time. I have noticed the above mentioned problems getting significantly better in that time. The physical sizing is much more in line with standard fixtures and more options such as outside CF floods and mini CF floods for track lighting are available. On the “warm up time” I have often found it easyier on the eyes when my eyes are addapted to the darkness and I turn on a light.
For me, the big drawback to CF lights (which I do use) is that all the ones I’ve seen contain mercury. There needs to be more education on this. The is a higher risk of bulb breakage and subsequent mercury release if used in table lamps in households with active pets and children. Also, the disposal of these lamps at end of life: I know enough that these need to be properly recycled at a recycling/hazmat center, but the public at large doesn’t. I hope the “green” versions of CF lamps come about soon so that this will become a non-issue.
I’ll start using CF when they start giving off a blackbody spectrum…even CFs with high CRIs don’t have nearly as pleasant a rendering as “hot” lights.
I also intensely dislike the light color of ordinary incandescents and CFs. I’ve started to see CFs available mail-order which claim color temperatures of 5500K and up. They’re marketed as specialty greenhouse “grow bulbs.” I haven’t had a chance yet to buy any and check them out.
I have started to convert all my lights to the new ones. All my local stores have the 40, 60, 75 and 100 watttage
output. I even got a 150 output for the garage. I started buying them one at a time for about $6 or $7. Then I saw
that Target sold a 4 pack for $15.00. Then I found out that Walmart sells 3 paks for $7.50.
I have found 3 way types and globe types too. In our bathroom we have globe round bulbs that go arund around the
mirror. My wife did not like the circular ones so I
had to pay extra and buy the round globe type.
My issue now is there are dimmer energy saver bulbs but they are
hard to find and cost much more.
I did find some on ebay but they cost me about $8 a bulb.
I now need about 20 dimmable flood type bulbs for my basement.
Need to find a deal somewhere.
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