I found threads in GQ that discussed the technical aspects of fluorescents, but couldn’t find anything about their aesthetics. When I hear the words, “fluorescent lighting,” I think of my office, and how I hate the overhead fluorescent lights. I even had the building engineer remove a couple of the tubes. So, are you pleased with them? If I put one in a table lamp (with a shade) in my living room, what will be the ambient effect? (glare, soft, harsh, etc.) Do you read by it? My bedroom reading lamp is round and has a metal shade around the bulb, but not completely over it; glare? eye strain? I haven’t really looked for them in stores, just noticed them in passing, but seems to me they’re ugly. I have a hanging light over my dining table and the bulb would be exposed. I’d love to replace my incandescents with them, but I don’t want to spend a lot and then decide I hate them.
My parents have replaced a lot of bulbs in their house with these and I hate them. They are blindingly bright, as well as ugly. They have one in a table lamp next to a chair I sometimes read in and I have to turn the lamp off because the shade doesn’t screen the whole bulb when you are sitting underneath the lamp and it make a horrible glare. I don’t know how my parents stand it.
I like my fluorescents, the newer bulbs especially that give off a softer light than most of the older compact coils I have in the house. I am about 80% compact fluorescent upstairs and a mix of tubes and compact fluorescent in the basement.
The energy savings have been dramatic.
The regular compact fluorescent and the tubes do glare. You can look for low glare ones at many large stores like Wal-Mart or Home Depot. They also have Dimmable bulbs available at on-line places like this.
I need to pick a few up soon for my bedroom.
Jim
Yes, 100%. For living areas* do *get the “natural spectrum” kind.
I’m happy with the few I have. I’m trying to replace where I can, which is tricky with a bunch of ceiling fan lights. However, I do get good use out of a 75-watt equivalent bulb for my porch light. The bright white works quite well and I save several dollars a month while leaving that light on all night.
I switched to small 40-watt incandescent touch lamps for my main lighting source in two rooms. Can’t use fluorescent for them because I can’t find anything with the right socket type.
We have a few and we like 'em. We like bright.
Yes. It was a pain in the ass for me to change the bulbs around my house, and I am happy so far with the ones I have.
I didn’t put them in the ceiling fan in the main part of the house, but I have 4 “soft white” ones here in my office. I sit here all day long and they are fine on my eyes.
Every so often I get a little surprised at how they take a moment to come on/warm up, but otherwise I’m pleased.
I have them in one room and I don’t like that they get less bright over time.
We have two tube fixtures and we put a bright tube in and don’t put the second in until the first one fades. That way we can keep a fairly uniform amount of light. We get one warm and one cool color tube in each for more natural light.
I draw a distinction between compact fluorescent bulbs and fluoescent tube light fixtures. The tubes I think are ugly and glaring and have an aggravating tendency to hum. They also look and feel really institutional to me. I had such a light fixture in my last kitchen and I took it out.
The compact bulbs are fine, though. I did notice that they were really bright for lamps, but then I also noticed that I had not bought the “soft-white” or “natural spectrum” kind. So I moved those ones to the overhead fixtures and got the kindler gentler type for the lamps. I don’t mind them at all.
Compact fluorescents are available in a variety of color temperatures. If you don’t like glare, avoid the 5100K bulbs. 3500K is warm and yellowish, 4000K is almost pink, and 5100K is baby-blue and will stab your eyeballs with steely knives if you flip it on in a dark room after a night asleep. :eek: Personally I love CFLs. I’ve got the 5100K bulbs in closets so that it looks like they’ve all got skylights inside. I use 4000K in the bathrooms and kitchen, and 3500K in the living room. They’ll pay for themselves by next May.
Compact fluorescents: Just great.
I have a dark downstairs area where the light is on almost all the time, literally. Day and night. The old incandescent bulbs had to be replaced very often, I mean extremely very often, like every three weeks. I put compact fluorescents in in March of 2006. They are still going strong.
I do resent that they said “Instant on!” when what they really meant was there is a slight delay. Come on, instant on is when the light comes on when you flip the switch and is as bright as it gets, right then. These delay for a second, just long enough to think “Oops, there it went,” and then it comes on rather dimly. It gets to full intensity within a minute, but that’s not “instant on” by my definition.
My other problem is that my house is 50 years old, the lighting recesses in some parts of my house were made to accommodate regular-sized bulbs, and the compact fluorescents do not fit. Either I can’t get the angle to screw them in, or once they’re in I can’t close the glass thing (square glass panel on a hinge). But I’ve replaced incandescents everywhere I can, some of them even on dimmer switches. If I’m going to have light I want it bright, so I generally have the lights at full intensity anyway. My husband dims them, and there’s not as much of a range of bright-to-dim, but they do get dim enough for him.
They’ve paid for themselves in actual cost and in time & trouble.
As much as I would like to install CFLs in my house to save money, I can’t. I can detect the 60-cycle hum in the bulbs. More importantly, the light emitted by CFLs makes my color blindness worse. I’ve gone so far as to remove all the fluorescent bulbs above and around my desk at work because of this. I can see better without them, in the semi-darkness.
It’s saved a couple of bucks in electricity.
I’ve replaced two bulbs as a “trial” to see if I liked them. One of the three ceiling fan bulbs and the lamp in my living room. I completely and totally DESPISE both of them. The light is hideous. I am frequently reminded of the beginning of Joe versus the Volcano and Tom Hank’s office lighting.
I doubt I will ever switch over. As much as I’d like the cost savings on the energy bill, it is just not worth it to be so miserable anytime the light is on.
MeanJoe
What type of bulbs did you try?
My sister hates the standard high intensity open bulb CFL. I started using the softer, enclosed bulbs in many of my fixtures and she did not realize that it was a CFL until one day when I switched on the kitchen light and it was a little slow to start. The light from these bulbs is not harsh at all but you need to put up with a dim start before they fully warm up. They were not expensive, I got 3 for $9 IRC. The full warm up, I would guess took about a minute.
I have many standards CFLs that pretty much turn on instantly and then warm up to full in 20-30 seconds. I have one older one in my bathroom that does have that annoying short delay before it turns on at all. It warms up quickly at least.
The technology is changing rapidly. There are different types to suit your needs.
The energy savings really adds up as the bulbs go into most lights in the house.
Jim
I’ll second What Exit? and urge you to look for bulbs with a different color temperature. Some brands do have a 60Hz flicker, and many have a slow warmup period, but the glare and washed-out color are a function of the bulb’s color temp. I’m not insisting that there’s a bulb out there that you will like, but I don’t think you have seen everything CFLs have to offer.
They’re a pain to deal with if they break.
Mr. Neville recently knocked over a lamp in our bedroom, breaking the compact fluorescent bulb. He said we should sleep in our guest room that night, because of the possibility that the bulb released mercury vapor when it broke.
I like compact fluorescents, otherwise- I can put a brighter bulb in a lamp that only takes a 40-watt bulb, which is good. But I’m not sure they’re good for klutzes like me and Mr. Neville, on the whole…
For most applications, they are working well. We’ve gone with the soft white in most cases.
I’ve just taken them out of the basement. If I’m going into the basement, it’s a quick run to go get something that we’ve stored there. With the slight delay in getting up to full brightness, my short trips were always done in semi-darkness.
I moved into a bedroom that’s half in the basement (ground level is waist height) with windows looking out to a shady backyard. It was dark, dingy, and terrible. Then I put CFLs in my lamp and now it almost feels like daytime in here. Yay CFLs.
There are some that start very fast. I don’t have the brands. However, it sounds like the lights are not on enough in your basement to matter. My basement is my workshop and I have a Pool Table on the other side. So Fluorescents Tubes and CFLs are well worth it for me. That and my wife is bad at turning of lights and I would rather have a 12w bulb burning all day then a 60w or 75w. 
Jim