The Problem with Light Bulbs: A Compact Fluorescent Solution

This weekend, I was visiting my family in the mountains, and my father in-law asked me about compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs).  He had just gone through the ordeal of trying to upgrade the lights in his house to save money and be more energy conscious, but he ran into challenges which made his efforts less than rewarding. The biggest challenge he found was when he tried to find lights that were compatible with his dimmable switches… the CFLs did not work when he installed them; nothing dimmed! Another huge problem that people report is that the colors of the CFLs are too white (or blue, leading to a cold, sterile hospital feeling).

I anticipate that a lot of people out there are probably struggling with similar issues, so I did a little research on how to replace your light bulbs without sacrificing aesthetics or functionality.

If you aren’t convinced to switch over to CFL’s, here are a few facts to get you started.  An ENERGY STAR qualified compact fluorescent light bulb costs between $3-$8, will save about $30 over its lifetime and use about 75% less energy than a traditional light bulb.  It will generally pay for itself in about 6 months or less and lasts 10 times longer than incandescent bulbs.

thanks to Energy Star

Let’s start with the issue of color.  Initially, CFLs only came in a bright, daylight color (you know the one… it gives everyone headaches!).  All of this has changed, though, and they now come in different shades categorized by temperature.  While the temperatures probably don’t make sense to most of us, all you need to know is that the lower the temperature, the warmer (more red) the color and the higher the temperature, the cooler (more blue) the light.  This picture from Energy Star explains the three colors with the temperatures.

For most uses, the soft white lights (around 2700K) offer the most natural and cozy ambience. Now, not all CFLs are created equal, and while I could tell you what my favorites are, Popular Mechanics has done a full review of several of the most popular bulbs.  The following table has the bulbs that were tested using an incandescent as the standard.  And, not surprisingly, the incandescent was not the top scorer in either color or overall quality.

thanks to Popular Mechanics

While these are all great choices, the most important lesson to learn is to buy a quality bulb with the color that you desire.

Now, let’s address the dimming issue. Because of how CFLs are made, they work a bit differently than traditional light bulbs.  Some of the newest models are dimmable, but there are a few things to be aware of. First, these bulbs act differently in different temperatures and they generally take between 15 and 60 seconds to warm up.  This means that the dimmer feature will not readily work properly for the first minute of use.  This is a problem, and many companies are working on (and making progress), but the consumer will, for the moment, have to deal with a minute of warm-up. The good news is that there has already been improvement. This warm-up time was more like 5 minutes with older bulbs, but newer bulbs, like these from Pure Spectrum, are at full power almost immediately. Unfortunately, along with all this new technology comes an added price tag.  While some CFL’s are much cheaper, you generally get what you pay for in quality. Just remember: the traditional light bulb usually costs about 5-10 times the purchase price in energy waste.  You can feel that waste by simply touching one of your bulbs after it has been on for an hour (but don’t burn yourself).

Also, be aware that CFLs only dim to 25% of their full intensity before shutting off completely, and in doing so, the color of the light does not get warmer like incandescent bulbs do.

To get you motivated, here is part of an article from TreeHugger.com that helps calculate those savings.

“To figure out how much money you’ll save by swapping in a CFL in your home, first determine the wattage of your current incandescent bulb you’ll replace. Next, find a CFL with equivalent wattage. Estimate the number of hours per day you use the light then check out the electricity rate on your latest utility bill. Finally, perform the following calculation using the wattage of the current bulb, and again for the new bulb. The difference between the two results will be your annual savings:

(Bulb Wattage x Hours per Day) / 1000 x Electricity Rate x 365″

Finally, a quick note about 3-way bulbs: these are a different category of bulbs, but work quite well.  Just make sure to buy the right bulb for your individual uses.  To get you started, here are a few of my suggestions for each of these three categories.  All three of these come in a warm color that should make you feel right at home

Normal CFL                                        Dimmable CFL                                  3-Way CFL

For more information on Compact Flourescents here are a few websites that give all the details including how to properly recycle light bulbs.

General Compact Fluorescent Info

-Energy Star

-Wikipedia

Recycling Compact Fluorescents

-Planet Green