I mean really, come on now…
It used to be when you needed a 60 watt bulb or a 100 watt bulb you went to the hardware store and bought a 60 watt bulb or a 100 watt bulb.

But now you need to know what the heck lumens are…and what the lumen equivalency of a bulb is to get what you need. And there’s also ‘soft white’, ‘bright white’ and ‘daylight’ bulb options. So that requires you to know (or think you know) ‘color temperature’! What the heck is a Kelvin, anyway? And now there’s ‘switchable’ A19 bulbs that let you set the…I don’t know what, to change the light level output of the bulb…

And light bulbs at the Home Depot…sheesh! There must 50 yards of shelves with nothing but light bulbs from floor to ceiling…bulb after bulb after bulb. Thank God the HD Associate saw the overwhelmed look on my face and helped me find the 100 watt equivalent 1600 lumen 5000 Kelvin Daylight A19 bulbs I never knew I needed until today!

Righteous rant!

When the 8 inch circular bulb in my magnifying jewelry lamp went out, I went to Home Depot. Low and behold, I walked out with an LED (switchable) direct replacement. Shoot, I bought two,

Estimate 100 lumens per watt. 60 watt incandescent would be 600 lumen LED.

Daylight leans "blue", and "soft white" leans "yellow", "bright white" is sort of neutral.

Most people prefer about 3200k which leans yellow for home illumination and close to "incandescent" 60-75W. (color wise)

The "bright white" is close to 100W incandescent bulb (color wise).

Be glad you are not looking for candles by which to read.

You want 5000-5600K for daylight.
Anything above that goes blue.
3000K is warm. I personally prefer soft warm over bright blue.

I have light spectometers at work to measure observation lighting conditions
They'll analyze the complete illuminated spectrum and display deficiencies.

One my hobbies is Photography, going on for 55 years now. So Color Temperature and all that are sort of a Sink or Swim thing, especially when shooting Film. Also an Engineer and been thru all of the Newtonian Physics. Didn't get into Quantum Physics because it's flat out weird and my brain isn't bent that way.

Anyhow Color Temperature is determined by the color produced by a "black body" heated to a specific temperature on the Kelvin scale and glowing due to that heat. Basically it's "red hot" at a specific temperature.

So what is the Kelvin scale. It is basically the Celsius scale -273.15 degrees. This means the scale starts at absolute Zero, where things get Quantum Physics weird. For instance I have read that at something like 2 degrees Kelvin you can actually see Light Moving. BTW, the speed of Light slows down at superlow temperatures. In addition resistance heating elements won't function at all because at superlow temperatures conductive materials have no resistance, they become Superconductors. So what happens below Absolute Zero. Current theory is that is not possible. If we are wrong about that not being possible it may be that time will run backwards. Who knows, we are dipping into Black Hole weirdness here. You know, Quantum Physics.

Anyhow all this is just something to consider when you are looking at that wall of light bulbs.

Do you want your light bulb to have bluetooth?


I recently just bought light bulbs where you can control the brightness and color temperature with a twist of the base.

Mister Monkey, sir, 60 x 100 = 6000.

Monkey math aside, I was pleasantly surprised by my lattest light bulb buy. I bought a dozen LED BR30s with two switches built in. One was for three brightness levels and the other was for 5 maybe 6 color temperature settings. I put one bulb in, played with the switches until my wife decided which she liked best, and set all the others the same before installing them. I won't have to buy new ones when she changes her mind.

Oh, since it hasn't been mentioned, color temperature is the color of tungsten when heated to a particular temperature in degrees Kelvin.

quote:

Originally posted by Johnny 3eagles:
Mister Monkey, sir, 60 x 100 = 6000.

Maybe in your part of Arkansas. But we have different thumbs over here...

I hope the MAGA agenda somehow includes bringing back simple incandescent bulbs.

It’s all made up bs to make you use less power.

I threw out all my “60 watt equivalent” bulbs because they were useless. I simply cannot read with the light emitted from a 8.5watt led bulb.

One thing's for certain...All these gov't mandated bulbs cost TEN TIMES as much as the outlawed incandescent bulbs, and they last no where near ten times as long!

Nah, I'm not going to buy a bulb if I can't see at minimum color temperature, lumens, CRI, and hopefully a spectral distribution chart. As a general rule I keep cool bulbs in the daytime living spaces in my house, and warm bulbs in the bedrooms and lamps I use while winding down. LED bulbs can be great, or they can be garbage, and I'll take all the information I can get about anything I buy before I buy it.

quote:

Originally posted by nhracecraft:
One thing's for certain...All these gov't mandated bulbs cost TEN TIMES as much as the outlawed incandescent bulbs, and they last no where near ten times as long!

Obviously you have forgotten how short lived those Incandescent bulbs for the home were. When I got my first home I used to hate having to go to Home Depot or the closest Hardware store to get new bulbs about once a month. I once mentioned it to my Dad and he just laughed, he said per his father during WWII the bulbs you could find were only good for a week or two and his experience wasn't much better in the early 50's.

I like the LED's, they don't add any significant heat to the home and when left on they can last for YEARS. I have a couple of lights I never turn off so if I have to get up in the middle of the night I can see.

I will also note that I wasn't kidding about the heat thing, back when I was living in a small rented apartment the furnace went toes up and I was told it would be 3 days to get it back one due to the holiday. So I turned on every light in the apartment and those incandescent bulbs kept the temp at 64 degrees over a rather cold Thanksgiving.

When I bought this last house I'm in, I went to replace all the mismatched light bulbs.

It was a hell of a time understanding just the wattage. I look at the bulb and it says something like 100 Watts bulb with 25 Watts power and I look at the receptable and it says 30 Watts maximum. So, do I believe the 25 Watts or the 100 Watts rating?

Forget the lumens, I just like day-light color.

quote:

Originally posted by gpbst3:
Do you want your light bulb to have bluetooth?


I recently just bought light bulbs where you can control the brightness and color temperature with a twist of the base.

I like this feature. The previous owner had an dimmer switch going to two overhead fans with lights. Except a sound would come from the fans or lights. So I replaced the switch with just an off/on switch and screwed in light bulbs that connect individually to the wifi and you can also group them. I can easily dim the lights from the phone as I need.

Then I had a front porch light that I just switch on permanently and I programmed the light to turn on an hour before sunset and 30 minutes after sunrise. It also brightens and dims automatically. How it know when sunrise and sunset is beats me because it does adjust according to the season.

quote:

Originally posted by nhracecraft:
One thing's for certain...All these gov't mandated bulbs cost TEN TIMES as much as the outlawed incandescent bulbs, and they last no where near ten times as long!

Thank you, sir, for saying what I didn't (but still thought)!

Lumens? Watts? what's the Footcandles of that sparky?!

quote:

Originally posted by Scooter123:

quote:

Originally posted by nhracecraft:
One thing's for certain...All these gov't mandated bulbs cost TEN TIMES as much as the outlawed incandescent bulbs, and they last no where near ten times as long!

Obviously you have forgotten how short lived those Incandescent bulbs for the home were.

I used quality Incandescent Bulbs and they were NOT short lived at all...That was part of my point!