As I mentioned in my review of An Inconvenient Truth, Heidi and I are working on taking steps to reduce our own carbon footprint. We went through one of the easier changes today, switching out nearly all of our incandescent light bulbs for new, energy efficient compact fluorescent bulbs.

Switching to CF bulbs is pretty easy, but they are different so there are a couple of unique issues to deal with. The first CF bulbs we bought a few years ago have a bright white light like the fluorescent lights you might find at an office. Most incandescent bulbs have a warmer, more yellow light. I’m not sure whether it’s just because we’re used to that color or if it has some deeper explanation, but the warmer colors are much more pleasant to come home to.

Luckily, these days CF bulbs come in the same soft white color that you get with traditional bulbs. The light is a bit whiter than a similar incandescent, but it’s not very noticeable. They still make bright white and daylight CF Bulbs, so check the packaging if the color is important to you. Not all brands come in the different colors, so you may find yourself compromising on this to get packages with more bulbs or whatever.

The brand we liked for color was the n:vision brand bulbs sold at Home Depot. The Commercial Electric brand also sold at Home Depot didn’t have a soft white color style bulb, so their bulbs were a little whiter than we liked. Check the Wikipedia entry linked below for color temps that you should check for on packages. Also, certain brands are only sold in certain stores. For example, Home Depot sells n:vision, Commercial Electric, and some Philips brand CF bulbs, but Lowe’s sells Bright Effects and Sylvania CF bulbs.

CFBulbs - small image

Another problem with CF bulbs is their shape. The most common and least expensive CF bulbs look nothing like regular bulbs. The image at left shows two regular bulbs and three different sizes of CF bulbs. Unlike incandescent bulbs, the higher the wattage, the bigger the bulbs. As a result, some bulbs don’t fit lamps or fixtures that are made for incandescents.

As you can see in the image, only the smallest bulb there is the same size as the incandescent bulb. That bulb is a 60W equivalent bulb. The other two are 75W and 100W equivalent bulbs. In applications where you need brighter bulbs, these bulbs may not fit. It’s worth checking this before investing in too many bulbs.

We weren’t able to replace all the bulbs in the house because the bulbs we bought can’t be used with dimmers. There are dimmable CF bulbs, but both Home Depot and Lowe’s turned up a big fat zero. We have a few fixtures that are on dimmers, so those are still running incandescent bulbs until we find the right kind.

Of course, there’s that one nice thing about these bulbs. These are 60W, 75W, and 100W equivalents. The actual wattage is 13W, 14W, and 23W. This is easily worth the initial investment, about $90 in bulbs for every bulb in the house. The bulbs also claim a 7-9 year life span. This depends on use, though, so we’ll see what bulbs work for us.

If you want to know more about CF bulbs, you can check the following resources: