An LED light that emits 900 lumens of light uses just 15 watts of power. (It’s named after James Watt, inventor of the steam engine.) Many newer bulbs are marked in lumens, which is the amount of light a particular bulb emits, and that’s because most new light bulbs, such as LEDs, use much less power than an incandescent bulb.įor example, a traditional 60-watt incandescent bulb emits 900 lumens of light and uses 60 watts of power. Not so very long ago, your main consideration in buying a light bulb was how many watts you needed: a 100-watt bulb for reading, for example, or a 60-watt bulb for a table lamp.Ī watt, however, is a measure of how much energy it takes to power a bulb - not how bright the bulb is. The average house has more than 20 light bulbs, meaning that switching to LEDs from incandescents could save you about $1,100 over the 10 years, or a bit more than $100 a year. (That cost also includes buying several replacement incandescent bulbs over the decade.) A CFL costs about $20 over the same span of time, and an LED costs an average of $13.70. According to the Consumer Federation of America, over 10 years the total cost - that’s the cost of the bulb and the power to run it - of using a 60-watt incandescent bulb would add up to about $70. You also need to take into account how often you’ll need to replace the bulbs and how much power you’ll use to run the light. The amount you pay for a single bulb, however, is just part of the cost. They tend to last about 2,500 hours, and burn even hotter than incandescent bulbs, so wait for one to cool off before you touch it. Halogen lights are very bright bulbs that are typically used for lighting small areas, such as kitchen counters.Some stores, such as Home Depot and Lowe’s, will recycle CFLs for free. Because they contain small amounts of mercury, CFLs will need to be recycled. They can last about 8,000 hours and cost about $2 to $3 apiece. Compact fluorescent lights (CFL), those twisty fluorescent bulbs, are also more energy efficient than incandescent bulbs.LEDs can last about 25,000 hours, compared with about 750 hours for incandescent bulbs. You can get some off-brand LEDs with the equivalent brightness of a 60-watt incandescent for $1 or less name-brand bulbs typically sell for more. Light-emitting diode (LED) bulbs were once the most expensive choice, but their prices have fallen significantly.You can still buy old-school incandescent light bulbs, which have a filament whose brightness depends on the amount of power running through it. That time is fading: New energy-saving regulations will phase out the sale of incandescent bulbs in 2023, so stock up now if they are your favorites. Not so very long ago, if you wanted a light bulb, you bought an incandescent bulb, the kind Thomas Edison created for commercial consumption. Buying the wrong one can mean yet another trip to the store - or, worse, a set of bulbs you can’t use. Finding the right one just takes getting used to a few criteria old bulbs didn’t offer. Technology has changed bulbs for the better: They last far longer than they used to, they can produce different intensities of light, and some can even be turned on and off by a cellphone, motion or the sunrise. īut don’t be intimidated by the hundreds of choices you have among the rows and rows of light bulbs. If you’ve ever gone to a big-box hardware store to get a light bulb, you may have glanced down the vast length of the lighting aisle and decided that it’s not such a bad thing to go to bed at dusk and wake up at dawn.
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