I have a bathroom fixture that sits above the medicine cabinet. It has 3 bulb sockets and it came with the Edison type bulbs. They look great but they don’t give enough light
I want to replace them but I’m not really sure what to get. I want bright light for shaving. If possible, something that looks semi-fancy or “designer”.
LED? CFL? I’m not sure what to look for as far as watts, lumens, temperature, etc.
Specific recommendations would be great, but general guidelines would be helpful too.
Edison bulbs are a design choice for style and have little to do with giving useful light. Normal bulbs are meant to be behind a globe or shade that will diffuse the brighter light, bare bulbs will be somewhat harsh.
There are lots of choices of LED bulbs now; CFL bulbs are inferior in everyway and I don’t even know if you can find them anymore. You could replace the Edison bulbs with Marquis (the big round ones) LED bulbs as even 40W equivalent bulbs in such a fixture are likely to be pretty harsh.
I recommend you consider a new LED vanity fixture, it will give better light and no bulbs to worry about.
Several new bulbs for the old fixture may not be much less in cost.
You say you want “bright light”. Some hardware stores do not even stock Edison bulbs beyond 60W, so that is increasingly looking like a dead end.
You can get crazy bright LED bulbs that draw way less than 60W and are plenty “white” enough for shaving. Perhaps halogen bulbs/track lighting are “fancier” but a lot of that will come down to the fixtures
If you look at this chart
you can see that you can get a lot more light for a certain number of watts simply by screwing in a LED-based bulb or even a CFL instead of what you have now. I do not know what you have now, but, e.g., if it’s 60W bulbs then a 18W LED will be twice as bright.
Temperature should be “white” IMO. In principle, you could try to figure out how many lux you want, say 1000–2000, which should not be a problem since you will be standing pretty close to the lights.
We put LED bulbs in the bathroom fixtures and the light improvement was so dramatic that over the course of about a year I replaced every bulb in the house where the fixtures allow it. Several dimmer switches had to be replaced but it was well worth it. There are a few lamps that won’t take the LED bulbs because the dimmers aren’t compatible but that’s about it.
You need to be careful with your terminology. People often assume that “Edison” means “visible filament,” not the base. The normal “light bulb” is an A19 or A20.
There are zillions of LED lamps available in hat base and form factor. a 23W LED is going to be super bright.
My super-fussy hobby-photographer DH insisted on getting bulbs as close to natural daylight as we could get, and we wound up with LED for longevity (the light fixtures in our bathrooms are a pain to get at safely).
I’ve had 3 LEDs quit working and have to be replaced in the last year so I’d question if they’re necessarily longer lasting. They are dramatically superior in brightness though. No question about that, IMHO.
When I moved into my house 8 years ago I replaced all the fluorescent and incandescent lighting with LEDs. They are all still working just fine. I have several in table and floor lamps that are well over 10 years old now.
I’ve had many of those curly CFL’s over the past several years, and they’ve generally had a lousy longevity profile. They’re a PITA to get rid of too, if you care enough to dispose of them properly.
After a little digging I discovered that I had 3 1100-lumen LEDs in the lightbulb bin. I replaced the Edisons with them and it’s just what the doctor ordered. I believe I have the brightest loo in town.
