Sunday, May 20, 2007

Changing Lights

Most of the light bulbs in my house were already compact flourescents, but there were a few places that I hadn't gotten around to changing because they were trickier. The problem areas were the bathrooms and the bedroom. The typical "spiral" style CF bulb wouldn't look good in the bathrooms because the bulbs there are exposed, and in the bedroom the lamp harps were too small, so the CF bulbs wouldn't fit. I decided to tackle those challenges today.

I found some rounded CF bulbs that work in the bathroom. Each bulb uses only 9 watts, so all 6 of the new bulbs combined will use less power than a single one of the old bulbs. These "soft white" bulbs put out a pleasant light and not the ugly blueish light that people associate with flourescents. I also changed the harps in the bedroom lamps and put in the spiral CF bulbs there.


Before

The new bulbs

After

The before and after pictures reveal a slight difference in the appearance of the lights -- the new ones are slightly smaller -- but I am satisfied with the new look. The energy savings will be worth it.

[This is a World Without Oil post.]

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Follow up: I now think that the new lights look better than the old ones. They are actually brighter even though they use less power.