It turns out that, in addition to my pickiness about ambient noise levels, pizza temperature, and plane ticket purchasing experiences, I am also quite demanding when it comes to lightbulbs. "Oh good!" I think. "Yet another personal eccentricity I've discovered about myself!"
Backstory: in addition to my feminist rants, I am also trying to do the environmental right thing - so I recently bought some flourescent bulbs.
Problem is, I hate 'em. I can take the flicker when they turn on, but I can't take the way they make the room (or me) look. They're bad enough that when I heard a news story mentioning the vague possibility that California might make incandescent bulbs illegal, I immediately started plotting to stock up on those energy-guzzling yet friendly-cozy-light-givng bulbs.
As a last hope before renting a storage unit to hoard my stockpile in, a couple of weeks ago I stopped by my company's environmental fair with a single goal: identify a type of flourescent bulb that I don't hate.
Me to PG&E guy: "I'd like to use flourescent bulbs, but the light they give is just horrible. Can you recommend one that's not?
PG&E guy: "Um." Pause. "Well, it's about color temperature.... Color temperature is measured in Kelvins. Most incandescent bulbs are about 2700."
"Great!" I thought. I figured I could go read some packaging and come home with a decent bulb. Not so, however: I could not find one single flourescent bulb package that referenced color in Kelvins. Instead, they offer misleading marketing-y language like "soft white." On incandescent bulbs, "soft white" may mean "normal light bulb color," but on flourescent bulbs, it means instead "evil color that makes you look like you're coming down with a wasting disease."
Several searches later, I found a better result: a guide to selecting bulbs that includes actual color warmth measurements. I haven't purchased from here yet, but as my bulbs burn out, I probably will, and so I'm sharing in case any of my three loyal readers also hates their flourescent bulbs:
Compact Fluorescent Light Bulbs...including color temperature info
Finally! Now, why exactly did this have to be this hard?
Monday, May 07, 2007
Flourescent bulbs that I don't hate
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3 comments:
Maybe something with full spectrum is what you are really looking for. Here is one (I haven't tried it.)
Faithful one-third.
Ooops. That post was supposed to include:
http://www.naturallighting.com/web/shop.php
i am so totally with you. i *hate hate hate* flourescent bulbs. as a trade-off i try to make do with not turning lights on. any room we're not using i keep dark.
maybe we should switch back to candle light. oil lamps? can oil lamps burn surplus vegetable oil like a biodiesel car? i think this might be the solution. fire hazards be damned.
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