I personally feel that anyone installing halogen spotlights should be put down for crimes against humanity, fashion and sanity. A neighbour has them in the kitchen, and not only do they add up to about 300W but you can't see what you're doing because of the shadows and they burn the back of your head!

Regular incandescent bulbs have served us well for decades, but they are hopelessly inefficient. Until we come up with a clean energy source, wasting it like that is basically shafting our children. That's a crime on a par with genocide; far worse than just murder or rape which only destroys the lives of a relatively few people.

LED bulbs are very nearly there, but because the demand is so much greater than supply we simply aren't able to buy them here at reasonable cost in the shops. I think they're coming very soon, but until then we have...

The fluorescent light. Tubes have been in use for all my life, and the 30W strip in my kitchen gives a far more useful light at a tenth the cost and damage as my neighbour's halogens. With modern circuits, there's no flicker and they light instantly. I think I replaced the tube once in 10 years and it was not expensive.

However, my experience with compact fluorescent lamps has been... mixed.

Some of them light instantly and are wonderfully bright. Some of them last for ever. Some of them have a lovely soft tone. Some of them are only 25p each.

Unfortunately, it's hard to find one that consistently performs on every measure. I've had packs of 4 where some blew up the moment they were turned on, and others lasted only a few months. Most annoyingly, my brand new expensive Phillips ones still take ages to warm up despite Tesco's 50p ones coming on instantly.

So, my question to you is: can anyone recommend a reliable, cheap, fast and bright compact fluorescent bulb?!

*places bulk order for LED bulbs from China*

We have four of these as the overhead lighting in the kitchen - isn't my father just a genius?

Oh, and they'll pop within months no matter how much you spend on them

I agree that LEDs seem to be the way forward for the future...

Our kitchen has twelve of the bloody things............. That's 600W!!!

* Don't shoot!! *

The previous owner put them in.
It's not even as if it's a big kitchen.
There are six in the bedroom too.
Three in the bedroom have been replaced with LED's, but they're not bright enough to change all six.
The same goes for the kitchen. Most LED bulbs aren't bright enough, except the 5W £20 ones, but I'm not replacing twelve bulbs at £20 a piece.
I've tired the lower wattage LED bulbs and they just don't give enough light.

My previous flat had 36 halogen bulbs! It was one big room. I put in a 40W energy saver up flood lamp in the middle of the room, that was enough and saved a lot on electricity.

We put all our own lights in, in the new house. 100% energy saver bulbs. We wanted LEDs under the kitchen units, but they were around 300€ a shot, instead of 150€ for the whole kitchen, using florescent strip lights under the units...

In the rest of the house, we have various types of energy saver bulbs. Some take a little while to warm up, but they are generally fine. The up flooder is over 2 years old and still on the original bulbs (cheapest IKEA bulbs we could get). The ones in our bedroom are at least 6 years old.

LEDs are great in tac lights and Mags, but crap in anything else. We just haven't got the market will yet to make the tech good enough IMO.

But I like the spirit of your rant and I'm gonna go look around the site today and evaluate our lighting situation if I get five minutes. Lush day for it too.

Tac, mags???

I have LV halogens throughout my house - yes I am a walking fashion disaster with questionable sanity and the only trees I want to hug are ones that have been cut up into nice square-edged planks that I can make into things - but the one thing that halo downlighters have in their favour is that they give a clean, clear, bright and instantly-on light that makes it easy to find things e.g. if you've dropped something on a dark carpet. The bulbs last forever in my house, largely because they're hardly ever used; all our room lighting is done with lamps fitted with CFL energy-savers, and I agree with you - whilst the CFLs you can buy now are far better than the ones you could get a few years ago, they're just not there yet; almost, but not quite.

The 'instant-on' vs 'warm-up' thing is infuriating, but doesn't seem to be something that the manufacturers seem to be worrying about or addressing - or even using as a selling point. The other headache is that not all lamp types are available in all fittings, and very few of them are dimmable - a moot point perhaps, you could argue that they're 'pre-dimmed' lol. For specific brands, I use Megaman for CFLs - linky - they're not instant-on, but give a decent light once they're up to speed, with the exception of the R7 (linear halogen replacement) which gives a very odd light - quite harsh, and slightly cool, even when bounced off a ceiling.

This throws up another drawback with CFLs - if you buy one and don't like the quality of light it gives (and just as an aside, can you ever remember fretting about the 'quality of light' that a regular 60w bulb gave off??) you're pretty much stuck with an expensive lamp you hate, but that'll last a long time - and you get nil eco-points for chucking a fully working lamp away, or even for buying it and not using it. It's worth remembering as well that even CFLs remain massively inefficient as light sources (just to a lesser degree than incandescent lamps, 20% vs 5%) and a lot of the articles (that were published around the time that 100w lamps were withdrawn from sale) extolling the benefits of energy-savers quietly ignored the fact that CFLs require more energy to produce in the first place than regular incandescents.

Full-spectrum CFLs give off a much nicer light, but only seem to be available in a limited range of fittings and at slightly eye-watering prices. LEDs are quite possibly the way forward as interior light replacements and have come a long way in the last few years, but are stil a long, long way from producing anything approaching the quality and quantity of light that you can get from a simple incandescent light bulb. Like alternative fuels, alternative light sources seem to reinforce just how adequate the existing technology is; you want to save energy? Switch that light off.

Paraffin lamps, anyone??

Pete

Natural light FTW!
If it gets dark, go to bed. (8+)

Mark

Yeah........... that told them.

+1 When I am alone, I tend to use artificial light when I wash my teeth, before going to bed and then, maybe, 20 minutes reading, before I go to sleep.

I have never had a low energy bulb go on me yet. I have around 28 around the house but am also looking for some 100W equivalent white LED for reading areas. The Low Energy are not that great to read in.

We have a normal fluorescent tube in the kitchen. The light quality is sh*te but being a distributed source you don't get the shadows.

35W ftw!

Tac(tical) i.e. milspec or law enforcement generally used either as a pocket device with high output for regular use, or to blind people temporarily. Or sometimes attached to rifles, shotguns and sidearms:



Mag(lite) Commonly available flashlight now comes in LED flavours or offers a conversation kit.



I have one of each and they're both awesome. Sadly, they're the only applications of LEDs I've come across that offer tangible benefits over regular solutions.

Ah cheers, I probably could have guessed the mag but had no idea about the tac. I use LEDs for dive torches, much more expensive up front but I reckon they pay for themselves in cells in no time at all. Plus they are a lot more resilient and the less times you need to change cells the better due to the reduced risks of flooding.

I have started to get the maglites starting with the smaller ones. I have the AAA and AA versions with LED. The main reason was battery life, without any loss of performance.

Must add they are the best torches I have ever owned.