good energy saving lightbulb - does it exist?

I regularly see Daylight bulbs in craft shops - they tend to be between £2 & £4 each depending on the shop - but the light is as the name of the bulb suggests quite close to 'daylight'

As for Energy savers that are actually as bright as the claimed wattage, I picked some up in Carrefour in Belgium that are 20W fluo, and at least as bright as a 100W tungsten.... heck of a way to go for lightbulbs though

My main problem with energy saving lightbulbs is that the failure rate is far earlier than claimed, so they are costing significantly more than ordinary lightbulbs, all said and done. I'm close to abadoning them.

Regards
George

The problem with energy saving bulbs is they need the lenght of tubes to get the wattage up. Just before I left my job in the lighting department Philips had brought out some new and cheaper energy saving bulbs. The looked like a normal bulb but a little bit bigger (but they made the normal bulbs a bit smaller anyway!)
With the new ones it took about 10-20 seconds for it to get to its full brighness.

I have had a few people come back with energy saving bulbs saying they did not last as long as blah blah blah (they actually write the date on in pencil!)
I have never seen/heard of an energy saving bulb exploding (they actually implode first, am I boring you yet??)

As for getting the 100watts of light i think from memory you would need about an 15-20 watt energy saving bulb to get 100watts. IMO the energy savers now give out a good light not too yellow.

As for true white light it depends what you mean. Natural sunlight is colourless, but as it goes throught the atmosphere it gets a blue tinge to it (once had a disagreement with a woman about this) so if you want a sunligth bulb AKA a day ligth bulb then they are the blue looking bulbs. I have only seen them upto 60W in normal bulbs. You can get then in energy savers but they are usually for craft lamps ahve have non retrofit bulbs (I think that is what they are called)
But they have odd fittings so u cant use them in a normal lamp.
Daylight bulbs are usually used to get a good colour rendering out of whatever u r looking at, so that why u get them in craft lamps for sewing etc.

If you what white light then it is Halogen you want to go for. These get very very hot! about 300c I seem to remember They are not energy saving, more expensive to buy but should last longer unless u dim them.

But they give out the whitest light of any bulbs. Also halogen are very direct lights, only about a 20 degree angle of light so they are spots you dont get overall lighting like you do with a normal or energy saver bulb.

(wow what a big post sope it all makes sense!!!)

Jem8472

You make some valid points. To confirm my situation, the expensive low energy bulbs which lasted only about 2 years were Osram, although other brands have faired badly, too. I have given them a very easy life. I don't use dimmers and they are on a time clock to come on for about 5 hours continuous running each day. To be fair, an older, bulkier Philips bulb has lasted much, much longer.