Photo courtesy of talk2nicu at Flickr.com.

Choosing the right light bulb can be confusing, since there are different technologies that produce light more or less efficiently than we’re used to. Most of us grew up using 30 watt, 45w, and 60w bulbs - but that much power from a CFL or LED lamp would be blinding! New lights offer plenty of ways to cut the electric bill, but the new numbers can make it difficult to compare different lamps.

The number to focus on is Lumens. Lumens measure the total amount of light that a bulb produces and make it possible to compare apples to apples. Here’s an easy chart from EnergyStar that shows the light intensity of various Incandescent bulbs:

When choosing Compact Fluorescent or LED lamps, this gives you a rough idea what size bulb you’ll need to replace existing lights. It gets a bit more complicated than that for LED lamps though. If you only need to light up a small area (such as a display case or the steps of your porch) LEDs are great because they offer more focused light.

Instead of sending light in every direction, LEDs focus the light along a narrow beam angle. This results in greater illumination over a smaller space. With a 60 degree beam (instead of a 360 degree dispersion typical with an incandescent or CFL bulb), an LED produces roughly 6 times the illumination per lumen rating. As a rule of thumb, you can multiple the lumens produced by a 60 degree LED by 5 when comparing to other bulbs:

If you’re looking for Compact Fluorescent or LED Lamps, we have a few different options to choose from.

CFL Flood light - This lamp really lights up a room with 1650 lumens, while using only as much power as a puny 30 watt incandescent bulb.

Full Spectrum CFL - This fluorescent bulb offers a wide spectrum of light, full of warm colors. It produces 1300 lumens, which is approximately equal to a 100 watt incandescent bulb.

CFL Bug Light - This bulb emits 1320 lumens of light that people can see, but insects can’t. It wont attract bugs, which is another reason to replace your 80 watt bulbs with one!

3 Watt LED - This lamp produces 240 lumens, which is just right for highlighting pictures, display cases, or pedestals. It’s equivalent to about 80 watts of incandescent light (due to the focus effect).

LED Floodlight - This array of LED lights covers a wider area with 250 lumens of bright lighting.

Popularity: 9% [?]

Did you enjoy reading this? Subscribe to this site! Choose from either daily email updates or  subscribe in a reader and never miss a thing.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 5th, 2008 at 5:00 am and is filed under Gardening Tips, Products We're Using. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.