Thanks for sharing that Emma. Good information now that incandescent lights are on the way out.

I wouldn't have halogen lights anywhere in my home because they put off WAY too much heat. We have almost all LED lights these days. We recently replaced the florescent ceiling lights in the kitchen and laundry room with LED fixtures. LOVE them....

Something I found years ago, and it may have changed as they have improved LED lights:

CFL - use about 25% of the electricity of an incandescent.
LED - use about 2%

-Grainlady

The way it sounds most of the bulbs will to get better and the price will go down. I like that the cfls will be eventually done away with. I think they are dangerous to the environment.

CFLs are A total unmitigated crock.

Compact fluorescent bulbs are absolutely dreadful if your work depends on seeing sell, and you're over fifty. I hate them. I turn lights off when I leave a room, have tiny LED night lights everywhere to save money...I've never, ever had a cfl last longer than eight or nine months. No matter what lies anyone spreads about how wonderful they are, they simply don't provide the quality of light that incandescent lights do.

Eva you are right about, they don't provide good lighting. I have almost given up reading at night, except in bed. I have an over head light there.

grainlady, you've got a zero missing. LEDs use just slightly less than a CFL, so if a CFL would be 25 % of an incandescent bulb, an LED might be 20%. But not 2%.

In my view, when you've reduced usage by 75%, another few percentage points don't matter. If you're getting poor life or poor service from CFLs, I'd bet you're buying inexpensive brands. I have top quality CFLs throughout my house and they provide excellent light and long life. In one room with CFLs in ceiling cans, I just replaced one bulb after 12 years of service. 5 others are still fine.

LEDs are great and will likely be everywhere in the future. But they're still unperfected and still too expensive. Most people won't live long enough in one place to recoup the extra expenditure.

You really have to experiment with the cfl's as some are a warm white, while others are cool white. We've used them for years and 'rarely' ever change them, meaning they last for quite a # of years. Eva, I understand what you're saying in that their light is not bright enough; however the last ones we purchased though were nicer in that they were more of a 'white-brite' light.

I have been buying the LED replacement bulbs from the big box store. They come in bright daylight or warm white. They have come down in price to about $8 a bulb (in the double pack) and they look to me as good as the GE daylight bulbs or soft white bulbs. They say they use 85% less energy and it may be a fluke but the electricity bill went down quite a bit last month after we implemented them.

CREE claims its LED bulb will pay for itself in one year. That's if you leave it on all year. Turn it off during the day and it'll take 2 years.

I need good lighting for my business, so the local grocery store had 100 watt equivalent cfl bulbs for $1 each. They're bright and show our work well. I bought more and put them in the basement. But in winter they take forever to get to full power.

The first CFL that I bought went into a table lamp, whose shade had been made to fit an incandescent and I was able, with some careful adjusting, to get it to stay in place.

Within a month or two, swatting a fly sitting on the shade ... broke the bulb! At which time, not having learned that they contained mercury so should be considered hazardous waste ... I pitched it into the regular garbage.

Recently, one of the ones that I bought some time ago, maybe three years or so and installed into a table lamp at my desk, would go out after having been on for a time. I could wiggle it and get it to go on again ... for a short time. Soon a wiggle would provide a flash, or little more.

One of these days I'll need to take it out and place it with the old flashlight batteries as hazardous waste.

They say that 13 or 14 of their watts equals a 60 watt incandescent: they lie.

When I was considering getting one of those LEDs a while back ... got out my wallet ... and a couple of moths flew out ... so I shut it up again.

ole joyful ... whose electric bill is just a hair over $100.00/month and, as the landlord's shop is on the meter, he pays about 12 - 15% of that

Does anyone know if the LED's and CFL's are tolerant of varying voltage? The voltage in my house varies from 113 to 126 volts. I used to buy the 130V bulbs and they lasted for awhile but they no longer available. The 120V bulbs last about a couple months.

Sounds like you have an electrical problem. There is almost always some difference but I would worry about your amount.

It was my electrician who told me about the 130V light bulbs.

I gave-in and bought two LED bulbs for my office room to replace a couple flood-type CFLs that had gotten very weak. The LEDs are *hugely* better. Instant full brightness, color-temp like incandescent. Only issue is that my ceiling can fixtures take R40 bulbs and R40-size LEDs are tricky to find. The two I bought are R30, which are smaller/shorter so aren't flush to the rim and expose the interior of the can. I found a couple sources of R40 LEDs online but haven't yet ordered.

Just FYI - I have a LED light bulb that has been on at my house 24/7 since August 2012. I am not kidding. It's a Utilitech I bought at Lowe's.

I found the R30 for $29. and the R70 for $49 at Menards. There is no way I would pay a price like that for a light bulb unless it was the only light bulb sold. My home is 8 years old and most of the orig incandescent bulbs are still being used. The R70 is huge, I don't think it would fit in my recessed ceiling light.

I first put CFLs floods in all our recessed lighting. They were slow to brighten up and made it hard to read at first. Ok after they warmed up. They were GE and cost quite a bit. After a year they were all getting dimmer. The lifetime claim only applied to burn out not adequate lighting. When LEDs came down in price to about $30 per bulb (100 Watt equivalent) I bit the bullet and bought some that came with a lifetime no burn-out guarantee. So far 6 have burned out. The manufacturer has sent replacements when I telephone him. Haven't had the heart to tell him about the last two yet. I don't think the makers really know the life of their product, just pie in the sky guesses. So I would wait another year for the prices to drop or the quality to improve if I were just starting right now.

Nerdy, I think there may be something wrong with your fixtures or your wiring. You're describing a high failure rate for two different kinds of bulbs and that suggests the problem isn't the bulbs.

snidely-

"Most fluorescent lights you'll come across, including compact fluorescents, are cold-cathode tubes. There is no heater at the electrode which emits electrons. Why is this important? Because there are more electrons emitted from a hot cathode than a cold one!

The 'warm up' period is due to self-heating of the cathode within the bulb."

Yet one more source: Cold Temperatures

Fluorescent lights don't perform well in cold temperatures. If the temperature is below 50 degrees F where the lights are being used, they may stay dim and flickering until they warm up. If it is too cold they may never fully light.

FYI - The colder the ambient room temperature, the longer it takes for CFL to warm up to full light. Yet one more reason we have purchased LED lights and replaced CFL. We keep our home around 60-64-degrees F. That and CFL have a reduced life if you place them where they get rapid on/off use - such as bathroom or a closet where you may frequently have the light on less than a minute.

-Grainlady

Everyone has different preferences and experiences. I'm very happy with CFLs. I've used them for nearly 14 years that I know of (dates to a remodel project). Do they work everywhere? No, and also not for everyone. I only have them in fixtures where the bulb isn't visible. I find warm up time is very acceptable (newest ones are better than ever) and durability has been exceptional for me.

Rapid on/off - agree, but I have only a few of those. Even in places where the on period isn't extended (like bathrooms), I haven't found useful life to be significantly curtailed. I rarely have burned out bulbs to replace.

Cold weather - I don't do cold weather either, I live in a mild part of California, we have no month with a mean daily temp below 50 degrees.

As I said, LED lights will be the future. For now, the ones that have a satisfactory lumen output and form factor are too expensive. Besides, I have little need for lights with a 20 year useful life for a house I won't be in 20 years from now.

When using someone else's words in a forum, I think it's best to indicate the source in addition to the quote marks.