It is not a clear cut thing to state when determining what compact fluorescent light bulb to use when replacing your incandescent light bulbs. Yes, the manufacturers put on their packaging that this replaces that but it’s a little more of a gray area than that. Why? Because the manufacturers are assuming that you are using the bulb they’ve used to compare. What’s the chance in that? Very small. The style, the lense, the manufacturer all make an impact on each individual light bulb.
If this is the case, how do you a non-technical person make the comparison? It’s a snap. What you’ll compare is lumens. Lumens is the brightness that the light bulbs put out and will translate from one type of light bulb to the other. For example, a 20 Watt Philips EL/A PAR38 Reflector Flood Light Bulb has 940 initial lumens. When looking at incandescent, an 85 watt BR40 Reflector Flood Light Bulb has 925 initial lumens. That’s pretty darn close and you’ll never tell the difference.
This is important for many reasons but the biggest is because you don’t want each recessed light bulb in your ceiling to be a different brightness. Needless to say……
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Tags: converting incandescent light bulbs to compact fluoresc, converting to CFL, converting to compact fluorescents
