I do not like energy saving bulbs only 70/100w old fashioned type, need middle ground

mrxry

Energy saving bulbs just make me feel sleepy as they do not give me the level of light I need to perk up, I have some halogen bulbs that are 70w but give 100w of light that 9 times out of 10 seem perfect but that one time out of 10 is normally in a smaller area i.e bathroom or kitchen where it feels the light is strongest in the centre and halogen seems to spread it out too much.

Similarly I feel rough in the winter months due to lack of light and at best energy saving ones are better for reading with rather than to sit in front of tv or computer with.

London50

It sounds to me as if you are suffering with SAD, there are bulbs/lamps ect that they say can help with this problem. Type SAD in your search engine to get a lot of info with suffering SAD and bulbs/lamps ect that may be of help to you :0)

Owain_Moneysaver

Energy saving bulbs vary and the cheapest ones are pretty naff.

Also many of the 'equivalent' figures on the package are optimistic to say the least. You probably need at least 25 watts of CFL (compact fluorescent) lamp to be comparable to a 100 watt ordinary lamp.

Try something like this or even this. Both will work better in a 'cap down' fitting so the electronic end doesn't get so hot.

mrxry

I have tried Phillips energy saving ones before and they dont seem any better, seem to be ok when you first put them in but dull rather fast.

Thanks for mentioning SADS, I did think that myself before but got no help from my doctor just being told to get up earlier so I have more light, and up till when I started uni like 7 years ago I used to prefer winter as I used to come home from work or college and sit in front of tv or play video game and that didnt feel right with a lot of light, or went for a drink but felt wrong going for a drink when it was light outside.

I have the same sort of mentality now just my body disagrees with it.

jc808

halogen lamps?

I_have_spoken

Just buy incandescents, they're still available but marked as 'rough service'. Not from the main high-street shops though, who have all capitulated in banning incandescents, but online up to 150W

EssexExile

Compact fluorescents are so last year LEDs are brighter, come on immediately & some are dimmable. And they are dearer of course.

d123

I was also just going to mention LEDs, OP could also research daylight low energy bulbs.

Both LED and daylight low energy bulbs are more expensive than normal low energy bulbs though...

mrxry

The older types I could still buy last time I got some about 5 months ago from a small chain of stores locally and dirt cheap i.e 4 for a quid and 100w.

I did get some halogen ones cheap but supermarkets either seemed to stop selling them or have them at like £4 for like 3.

Reading above it reminds me of another thing I dislike about energy saving bulbs, they take a while to get bright so my brain doesnt wake up.

hannahsmamma

Ah, in the good old days you chose either 'clear' or 'pearl' lightbulbs, the higher the wattage the brighter the light. A 150w clear bulb lit the place up like Blackpool illuminations. I have never got to grips with these new bulbs and I am always disappointed with the result. I think there is a 'conversion chart ' somewhere on the forum??? which might help with choosing the right bulbs.

Nilrem

I'd third LED's, we just replaced pretty much every bulb in the house with them after getting fed up of the poor performance/light from the CFL's*.

They're about 2-3 times the price of a CFL, but should last much longer and do give a much better light, for example a "60 watt equivalent" Osram LED bulb is putting out more light than the "100 watt equivalent" Phillips CFL it replaced, and a single OSRAM "40 watt equivalent" golf ball type bulb seems to be putting out a better light than two of the "halogen low energy" bulbs that were in the same fitting.

But as has been said you can get different sorts of light from the same tech, as there are different colour levels (warm white being about the most common), including "daylight" bulbs which mimic natural daylight much better (Phillips do some great bulbs for that).

I'm probably going to end up spending about £100 to replace my desk/wok lamp in a few weeks with a new LED daylight version because I need a good light for colour reproduction at my work desk, and I've got fed up of the various other versions I've tried (incandescent daylight bulbs, CLF daylight bulbs etc) as the bulbs either get too hot/die to fast, or the light isn't good enough, and I recently got to see one of the new generation of LED lambs and was thoroughly impressed.



*There is now a large box in the garage full of them, mainly unused as at one point we kept getting them from the energy companies and half of them didn't fit in most of our fittings (too large).