Kermit's A-ha! Moment: Examining Light Bulbs

In our first look at the greener side of things, we examine the bright and confusing world of light bulbs! Hooray! 

I'm sure you're just as excited as I am. I'm SO excited that I had The Hubs do the research and information accumulation for this article for me so I could share in the excitement. Because lights are super exciting. 

Since this is so exciting, I'm sure you'll bear with me and read this whole thing. In case you don't, here is what we'll discuss, broken down so you can skip to whatever part you'd like to scan, because tl;dr for realzzz: bulb information (lumens, CRI, and color temperature) and a bulb breakdown (incandescent, CFL, and LED).

When it comes to learning to be a little greener, a little more efficient, switching your light bulbs is one of the easiest and quickest things you can do. Yes, it can be expensive if you decide to replace all of your bulbs in one fell swoop, but that's not how we did it in our home. As our incandescent bulbs shuffled off their respective mortal coils (heh, coils...just fake a chuckle for my sake), we replaced them with something more efficient.

The Information

Buying bulbs is much more confusing than it once was. Rather than just needing to know about the wattage of a bulb, you now need to know a pile of new terms and how they apply to you: lumens, CRI, and color temperature. Because of the confusion surrounding this information, it's easy to get flustered or frustrated when trying to identify the best product for your needs. As a result, consumers are flipping their switches, then flipping the bird because they're unhappy. Flip out no longer, my friends.

• Lumens
• This is the amount of light (or brightness) the bulb gives off.
• In the past, you could determine how bright a light was by how many watts it used. However, now that lights are more efficient, they put off more light for less wattage.
• Here's a nifty little video about lumens that explains it very well.
• For reference, the old "60w" incandescent bulbs you used were roughly 800 or 900 lumens. 
• CRI
• This is how "pure" the color is that's displayed. The  "harshness" people see in some fluorescent lights is a result of bad CRI. 
• A low CRI will not show true colors in its light and can cause greater eye fatigue and even headaches.
• Poor CFL and LED bulbs have CRIs around 80-82. The best have 90+. 
• Color Temperature (in Kelvin)
• This is the "feel" of the light.
• The lower the number, the more "yellow" the light is
• Very high numbers have a more "blue" light.
• For example, 2700k is very yellow, 3000-3600k is yellow white, 5000k is nearing sunlight (almost pure white), and 6000k is blue.

There are also new labels for light bulbs which help break this information down for you:

I'm a label!

Here's the label for a bulb containing mercury:

Next, we'll discuss three bulb types.

Nope, just 3

Bulb Types

Incandescent
I won't spend a lot of time on these because most people are already familiar with them. Incandescent bulbs are being phased out because they're the least efficient bulb out there, but they aren't banned, as many believe. Manufacturers have been mandated to make more efficient bulbs, so technology is changing and these bulbs are actually rising in cost. According to their manufacturers, the average lifespan of incandescent bulbs is ~1,000 hours of use. The most commonly used wattage used is 60 watts.

CFL
CFLs (compact fluorescent lamp) are a step up from incandescent bulbs. They're essentially fluorescent tubes bent and squished into a smaller form. Like their bigger brothers and sisters, they do contain a small amount of mercury, so their disposal is a little more complicated. However, a number of hardware and electronics retailers have free recycling drop-offs for CFLs. According to their manufacturers, the average lifespan of CFLs is ~10,000 hours of use. The CFL equivalent to the 60 watt incandescent is 13-14 watts for the same amount of light.

LED
LED (light emitting diode) bulbs are the most expensive bulbs out there, but they're by far the most efficient with the longest lifespan of ~25,000 hours or roughly 20 years. Think about that. You could theoretically have a baby, change all of the bulbs in your house to good LED bulbs (because priorities) and that child would never see you change a light bulb. Now, no one would do that, but think about what that means. They wouldn't understand "change a light bulb" jokes. Because priorities.

Do you know how hard it is to find a 'change a bulb' joke that won't offend someone? So hard I had to go with this pic.

Within the LED market are a couple of L prize products, a few of which we have in our home. Sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy, "the L Prize is the first government-sponsored technology competition designed to spur lighting manufacturers to develop high-quality, high-efficiency solid-state lighting products that set leading-edge performance benchmarks for industry."

L prize!

In summation, the better the bulbs, the more you'll save. The cost of operation lowers with more efficient bulbs and the savings continue to grow as the lifespan of bulbs lengthens with more technologically advanced products. 

Something worth noting: you get what you pay for. I've heard a lot of complaints from people who have purchased CFLs or LEDs for their homes, but they don't like that the bulbs "take too long to power up" or something like that. When it comes to bulbs, brand name bulbs are significantly higher quality products. I know the object is to save money, but sometimes you need to spend a little more to save a lot more and this is one of those cases where brands matter.

Don't be like these guys.

In our home, we have Philips, GE, and Home Depot's brand (EcoSmart) bulbs - they're all pretty good brands with bulbs that have held up. We have 3 LED bulbs in our living room because they're the lights that we use the most often. We purchased Philips L Prize bulbs, which are pretty pricey, but they're the best of the best.

Here's to a brighter future!

Comment here or on Facebook and let me know what you think! What would you like to hear about next?