apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

I'll have to check this one out. All of my outdoor lights have CFLs installed, mostly because I didn't like the harsh light on the inside of the house. I've been looking for a while for a bulb I could use indoors so my house was fully CFL equipped. I'll have to pick one of these up and give it a go.

Has anyone ever tried actually dimming one of these?

I tried dimming a different brand and the dimming of the ones I bought was nothing like the dimming curve of an incandescent bulb. In fact there was no dimming at all over 90% of the dimmer's range, then a sudden abrupt drop in output and that was that.

I'm curious to find out without wasting any more money if any of these things dim like a real light bulb.

You should test one out before buying a slew. Some dimmable CFLs dim better than others, in my experience. In the past GE's bulbs seemed the best by far, though. I'd imagine they've only improved their product over time.

Recently moved into a house with CFL bulbs in every fixture and I **hate** them. I've been confused about the "harshness" everyone complains about because these bulbs are not harsh, they are yellow and dim and make the house feel dark and dirty. I bought a small pack of another kind of 15-watt CFL and tried those in one room only but to the same effect! What is up? These suckers are expensive, I can't afford to keep up the trial-and-error. Any suggestions?

Mjoe - that's why I have halogen bulbs in all my recessed cans, my kitchen fixture (which takes 12 miniature bi-pin lights so no CF there anyway), and my dining room fixture, also bi-pin bulbs. I like the bright white quality of the light.

That said, there are companies that do sell true daylight balanced bulbs. I've seen them online.

I'm pretty sure Home Depot has them, and Lowes too.

For me, dimming in every socket and compatibility with X-10/Insteon controllers is a requirement so I'm still looking. Maybe when LED lights come down in price.

And whatever I switch to has to fit my existing bi-pin fixtures. And work with my 4" recessed trim kits which today's CF bulbs don't.

I'll support LED lights a lot faster than mercury containing CF bulbs...but that's just me I guess.

What are 60W equivalent CFL bulbs good for? I find them useless -- maybe for mood lighting or accent lighting, but way too dark for general purpose -- maybe that's why a lot of people don't like them?

They do make different temperature CFL now -- some even claim to be full spectrum -- Home Depot definitely carries them.

My whole house is almost entirely lit by CFLs, and I don't find them harsh. However, I like everything brightly lit -- anything under 100W equivalent light output is just unacceptable to me, especially for reading. The 100W CFL uses 23W, which is OK in my book. But dimmable 100W CFL is rather hard to find...

I'm more inclined to support LED light bulbs too, if they just aren't so darn expensive!

I use one CFL in my kitchen overhead. It dims, not very well, but I usually don't dim that light. All my other fixtures are either halogen (20 watts), 60 watt cadelabra lamps, or big-ass floods that I usually dim way down. I have yet to find a CFL that can replace a flood that is dimmed regularly.

Bring on the LEDs!

boomer: dimmable CFLs don't work like incandescents when it comes to dimming and likely never will, they step dim rather than having a smooth curve. dimming works by varying the voltage, and once the voltage gets to a certain low point the gas in CFLs will no longer excite the phosphor and they simply turn off. because of this, dimmable CFLs have a hard bottom of 10 to 20%.

as for harshness, CFLs have been available in a wide range of colour temps for a while, and are much less harsh in the 2700K range. with an electronic ballast, i've yet to use them and get complaints. I've had bad experiences buying CFLs from bigger retailers like Home Depot, though. they seem to still be carrying a lot of bulbs with magnetic ballasts (slow to ramp and flicker), though if you are only buying dimmables you won't have to worry about that.

for what it's worth, i buy nearly all of my CFLs from buylighting.com. even their generics are pretty good, and if you don't like the bulb, they have a pretty great return/exchange policy.

Nobody has mentioned the common hum of dimming CFLs.

I want to make the switch, but I mostly have halogen GU10's or MR16s, of which there is no CFL equivalent. I also cannot handle the harshness of the light. I tend to have a dozen low level light sources in a room rather than a single high output one. It is all about the lighting.

IKEA sells halfway decent CFLs. The light quality is so-so, but better than it was a few years ago. The price is KILLER. I use a mix of a lot of smaller CFLs with a couple of incandescents and halogen bulbs thrown in for good measure, and the quality of the lighting in my apartment seems fine.

I think if you try to light a good-sized room with only one or two CFLs it's gonna look awful, but if you switch to 3 or more lamps and maybe throw in an incandescent bulb or two it'll be difficult to tell the difference between that setup and an all-incandescent setup.

The n*vision CFLs have a color that nearly matches incandescents -- they won the Consumer Reports CFL challenge awhile back. I've had multiple friends come over and hours into the visit say "wait, are those CFLs?"

I have the n*vision ones from Home Depots and like them a lot. They come on instantly, no flicker, and the same color as incandescents. (I have some two-bulb overhead fixtures in my apartment and where I ran out of CFLs, I have some that have one of each--the light from each side is truly identical; you can't tell.)

The only think I don't like about the n*vision is that they don't come on full brightness, so they seem dim for the first 30 seconds or so.

I've heard that TCP bulbs are the best. I've only ever seen them for sale online and I haven't personally tried them yet, although there was one in a hotel room I stayed in once and it seemed pretty great. No delay on, nice color, nice brightness. They sell them at 1000bulbs.com (search for TCP).

For dimming, I've heard that cold cathode fluorescents are the best because they have a smooth range of dimming and no hum. It's the same technology that's in most laptop backlights. Again, I've not tried these. I'd love to replace my dimmers with these, but at about $15 each, these bulbs are too expensive for me at the moment. They sell them here.