The light bulb choices out there today really are staggering. Opinions fly about from all directions, and they all seem to say something different. There are advantages and disadvantages to all types of bulbs, but not in equal proportion. Currently I personally prefer compact fluorescent light bulbs and I’ll explain why, but I will also talk a bit about the other main contenders: incandescent and a recent challenger, LED light bulbs.
Incandescent bulbs have been the mainstay in just about every home for a great many years. It was all we had, and as far as we knew it worked really well. Incandescent advantages include instant-on full luminosity; walk into a room, turn the light on, and it’s immediately as bright as it can be. Dimming is another attribute; install a light fixture dimmer and you can control the intensity and volume of light from very low almost nonexistent light all the way to maximum power and brightness.
Unfortunately, until compact fluorescents came along, we didn’t really know just how inefficient incandescent light bulbs were. The power usage seemed normal and reasonable, but it was fairly outrageous compared to CFL and LED light bulbs. Without getting into specific numbers (I’ll do that in another blog) I can tell you that CFLs and LEDs blow incandescent out of the water.
I’ll come back with another blog and discuss specifically CFLs and LEDs. For now, if you still use incandescent, check out some of the energy saving light bulbs out there. You might be surprised what’s available!