A Guide to the Most Energy-Efficient Light Bulbs
Energy-Efficient lighting. Green Design. Environmental Consideration. Carbon Footprint. Sustainability. So much pressure from all around to make sure we make good, considerate decisions about all the things we buy. Our cars, our clothes, our electricity, and even our light bulbs. (As per usual, we at Mask. prefer the technical term “lamps” to refer to light bulbs, as “bulbs” belong to plants and sprout flowers in spring.)
Different lamps have different applications, so below we take a quick look at the various technologies that we use for lighting, and the pros and cons of each. You can decide for yourself in the end how much you want to compromise to get the lighting you want.
Carbon Filament
The first commercially viable lamps were called “Carbon Filament”. These have made a resurgence in the last decade for aesthetic reasons. The so called “Edison bulbs” are ‘vintage’, ‘farmhouse’ or ‘steampunk’ suitable, and are often chosen more for the look than their function.
The carbon filament is less energy-efficient light bulbs than its tungsten counterpart, it doesn’t last more than 2000hrs, and uses upwards of 40W per lamp. They are, however, always dimmable, and don’t cost as much as the same option in LED. They’re always warm white but can make things around it have a yellow or amber glow, so not suitable if the quality of the light is important.
As a standalone décor piece that’s only used on occasion, it’s a reasonable choice for your feature lights.
Incandescent Tungsten Lamps
The incandescent Tungsten Lamps are the ones you’re familiar with if you were alive in the decades before the 1990’s; before compact-fluorescent lamps took over. These were either 40W, 60W or 100W, and you chose them based on the wattage and how much light you wanted. These are also dimmable, but usually very utilitarian. They had a job, and they did it. The colour of the light was the closest artificial thing to actual sunlight, and the colour rendering was nearly perfect. Very wasteful as a choice, they gave off more heat than light, and didn’t look very appealing. More cons than pros, and since the early 2000’s, illegal in most counties. Don’t use this one if you can help it.
CFLs
Compact Fluorescent lamps (CFLs) were the 20th centuries answer to “going green”. Many countries offered incentives like free lamps if you swopped your incandescent lamps, but CFLs were often still very utilitarian and didn’t offer much aesthetic appeal. They were commonly available in the spiral options, but for many years, only came in a cool white, which has its own series of drawbacks. They were used for both residential and commercial applications, and had a longer life than incandescent lamps, and used far less energy. They, really, just weren’t very pretty. You can use this if you’re not sensitive to light colouring or its influence on you (which means you’re a robot). They’re also seldom dimmable, and don’t have much benefit with regards to cost. These are dated in the 21st century, and there is definitely a better option available.
Halogen
Halogen lamps are, I think, my personal favourite. They’re a graceful compromise between the crisp, perfect light from a tungsten lamp, and the energy optimiser you want from an LED.
Halogen lamps are technically still tungsten lamps, but because the filament is encased in a secondary envelope of glass, and is house with the inert halogen gas, it lasts much longer, and is far brighter at lower watts. This is a perfect choice in decorative lighting, especially if you’re using anything with glass or crystal. LED lamps just don’t have that same ‘sparkle’ that makes you look twice. Halogen lamps still have a short lifespan (2000-3000hrs), but they might well be worth the effort for the increased aesthetic you get.
Encourage this choice if you’re using a high-end décor piece with glass or crystal – your fixtures might look dead with regular LED.
LED (The Most Energy-Efficient Light Bulbs)
Light Emitting Diodes. Most people that we deal with commonly misuse the term and use it as a blanket for anything that isn’t any of the above light-types. Any light source that has little yellow blocks or rods in use, is powered by LED. The little yellow bits are the diodes, that emit light. Therefore, L – E – D.
LEDs can be used in flexible strips (both regular and colour changing), but also on rigid PC boards for linear lighting; they can be individual chips for 1W or 2W decorative pieces, or they can be incorporated into a classic looking light bulb that you use anywhere in the home. They can also be used in an array, which is the most common form in commercial and technical lighting. A series of rows and columns of individual chips, combining to offer mammoth performance and lumen output (think sports-field lighting).
For every day, household use, we recommend LED lighting that you can maintain yourself. Due to LEDs very long lifespan (15 000 – 50 000 hrs), it’s not always ideal in a residential space to have a fitting you can’t maintain. If, after 5 or 6 years, your integrated LED (one built into the light, you can’t remove it) fails, you need to replace the entire light-fitting, not just the light source. After this time, the light-fitting is likely discontinued, and you won’t get one to match. Ensue full refurbishment because you couldn’t replace a light bulb.
Commercial projects need the higher output and performance of on-board LEDs, and typically have a refurbishment or scheduled upgrades every 5-8 years anyway – so it’s far more sensible to offer the non-replacement fittings with longer lifespan.
(For interest – if a light is on 10hrs a day, for 365 days a year, i.e. an office or retail space, you’re looking at 3650 hrs per annum – so even the lower quality LEDs with a rating of 15 000 hrs, can get you over 4 years of use.)
As the most energy-efficient light bulbs, LEDs use far, far less energy than it’s pre-1990 counterpart of tungsten lamps. These days, lamp performance isn’t measured in Watts, but in Lumens. We wrote another blog post about lumens that you can read here, but a 8W or 9W LED can now output as many lumens as a 100W tungsten lamp used to.
Another comparison is that a 100W lamp used to output around 1200 lumens, and a 100W LED (which will be one of those array types, large flood, or sports-field option) can output 12000 lumens or more. That’s an enormous improvement on efficacy and energy use. There are LEDs in development that output as much as 200 lumens per Watt, so a 6W LED might soon be able to replace your 100W lamp for equivalent brightness. I’m in favour of savings over 90% to save some electricity and money, not to mention the environment.
Should you have any additional questions, please do not hesitate to reach out
hello@mask-design.co.za
+27 64 908 8411
