We’ve now have 3 fixtures with compact fluorescent bulbs in them and I have to say that I’m quite content with the results. The lights do illuminate the room about as much as their comparable incandescent bulb.
There has been one minor issue though. The bulbs take a little while to warm up. As soon as you flick the switch there’s a second or two before any light comes on at all, the bulb flickers once or twice and then comes steady illumination. But then there’s about two or three minutes before the bulb gets up to 100% lighting. Once it’s warmed up, the lighting’s pretty good, but it is noticeably dim before that.
The colour is also different from incandescents. I knew that going in but I was somewhat surprised as to how noticeable the difference is. We’ve got a lot of white in the kitchen and it really pops with the new light. But I would assume that the flipside is that if you’ve got some nice warm soft tones they will get a little more frigid. We have a warm earth tone in the living room, but we also have a mix of lighting so I really haven’t noticed the change that much. Though you can see the different light coming from the two fixtures. That is a little distracting, but since one is on a dimmer switch, we’re just going to have to live with it.
Overall I’d say that the compact fluorescent experiment has been a success so far. Still adjusting to the light switch lag, but I expect that we’ll get used to that pretty fast. Now I just need to identify all the fixtures where it makes sense to replace the bulbs.
compact fluorescent, energy efficient, House and Home
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1 response so far ↓
1 Colin // Jan 24, 2006 at 4:20 am
My family recently switched some of the light bulbs in the house to these new efficient bulbs. Obviously because I wasn’t living at home at the time I wasn’t informed, because, quite frankly in the grand scheme of things it was a non-event. Certainly not worth writing home about so to speak.
Long story short, it took me a while to understand why the lighting in the computer room wasn’t as acceptable when I just turned on the light. The light ended up fine, but it was always concerning when I turned them on. Of course, I was then told about the new lights (which are enclosed) and it became more clear. I didn’t ask how many were replaced, but the two or three that I know about are all very heavily used, so I hope that we are doing our part.