A quick history of the electric lightbulb: One day Thomas Edison called to Mrs. Edison, “Hey, honey — come see what I just did!” And we were off and running. Lightbulbs got to be so popular that cartoon characters had them over their little heads to show that they had an idea. Apparently the only idea worth having was inventing a lightbulb.
For the longest time, the bulb’s light output was measured in watts, interesting since, even if you don't know exactly what that means, you understand it anyway.
I’ve bought a lot of bulbs over the years, almost all of them 60 watts, making it easy to add to a shopping list: bulbs. (You might have to write “lightbulbs” to distinguish them from, say, tulip bulbs, but I would not be buying any bulbs that require planting.)
Sadly, we are waving a fond farewell to incandescent bulbs and their watts, and giving a tepid welcome to LED bulbs, with their longer lives and higher prices, and whose light output is measured not in watts, but in lumens. Lumens just kind of slipped in under the radar. As a public service, and in an effort to remove a little stress from the stressful lives we are all living, here’s a chart of approximate watts-lumens equivalents:
PUBLIC SERVICE, Part 1
Watts / Lumens
25 — 200
40 — 400
60 — 600
75 — 800
(See what happened right there? Keeps you on your toes.)
100 — 1200
Unfortunately, this is only half the battle. Besides the amount of lighting involved, we also have to worry about what “color” the light is. We didn't used to talk about light color at all, other than the occasional pink or black bulb. We did consider how harsh the light would be, and for that we had two choices — Soft White and not Soft White.
You don't know what you've got ‘til it's gone.
We are being introduced to the whole concept of "color temperature,” just a tad mind-bending. You might well ask why they even mention colors, since they sure don't look like colors, except maybe yellowish, which is nothing new for us, and they are measured in Kelvins (K), which is.
I found this online: “A lower color temperature creates a warmer, cozier light. And a higher color temperature creates a cooler, more energizing light.”
Don't you just love it? Kelvin should've been a comedian.
PUBLIC SERVICE, Part 2
2000-4100K: home use
2000K-3000K: gives off a soft white glow, often yellow in appearance (seriously? a white glow that looks yellow?)
3100K-4500K: gives off a bright amount of white light
I had a little run-in with all this recently when I bought a standing lamp with a nice, bright, 5000K light, only to find the light was so bright we could've performed microsurgery in the living room. Thanks to the “research” I did to write this, I know why: 5000K is “close to the color temperature of the sun at noon.”
Sure is a lot to take in just to buy a lightbulb.
Thanks for tuning in.
Keep those comments coming! They are great.
Turns out that if you don’t pay attention to these important measures of energy and light temperature, you end up with a pretty funky lighting situation:) Someday I’ll get a full row of matching lightbulbs in my house, and this information will come in very handy in the process!
Then there’s the question of whether you should throw away old bulbs in use and replace them all with LED now (which seems very wasteful to me but may be better for the electric bill) or replace them with LED bulbs as they blow out. As another commenter pointed out, the latter may leave you with a patchwork lighting collection for a while if they are all in one room.