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Choosing the right light bulb could drastically reduce your power bills and positively affect the environment, but with so many light bulb options on the market, knowing which one to choose can be difficult. Below is a simple comparison between incandescent, compact fluorescent (CFL) and light-emitting diode (LED) to help you decide which is right for you.

Efficiency

There’s been a lot of buzz lately about both compact fluorescent and LED lighting in homes. In fact, a recent survey found that 74% of US households have at least one energy efficient light source in them. Did you know that older incandescents, or traditional light bulbs are only 10% efficient?¹ Meaning that only 10% of the electricity they use is transferred into light and the rest is turned into heat. From a cost standpoint this is not a very efficient way to light your home. Luckily, people have started to realize that energy efficiency is the wave of the future and if they want to save money on their electricity costs and help save the planet, they have to make some changes around their home. Now more than ever LED and CFL’s are available everywhere you shop, even in most grocery stores. Making the transition from outdated incandescents to LED’s and CFL’s easy.

LED Lighting: Cost Factors

When lots of individual LED diodes are put together, they can provide quite a bit of light very efficiently. Unfortunately, with the amount of individual LED’s that are needed to replace more conventional light sources, high quality LED fixtures can become cost-prohibitive for the average household. They initially cost about 50x more than an incandescent light bulb but they last approximately 100 times as long as an incandescent bulb meaning that during the lifespan of an LED style bulb, you would have bought 100 incandescent bulbs. That’s a lot of light bulbs!

CFL Lighting: Cost Factors

CFL lights are the ones you see in every store nowadays. They are easy to find and cheaper than LEDs. They are a great replacement for your traditional incandescent bulb. They come in many styles and shapes including the spiral shape and the globe.

If you compare these to incandescent bulbs, CFLs are approximately four times as efficient because a 25 Watt CFL bulb will have the same light output as a 100 Watt incandescent. They will last approximately 10 times longer as well-during the life of a standard CFL, you would have used 10 incandescent bulbs. Again, that’s a lot of light bulbs!

So if you are comparing based on cost, you will have to examine whether you have the money to retrofit all or some of your home upfront. A CFL has a higher purchase price than an incandescent but can save over five times its purchase price in electricity costs over the lamp’s lifetime. If you want to use CFLs this can be expensive upfront but as you can see, the long term cost savings based on life span and energy efficiency are enormous.

Cost Factor Comparison

On the subject of price, in most situations, the CFL would also be a better choice over the LED. It’ll consume essentially the same amount of electricity, and even though it has a shorter lifespan, even if you replaced the CFL three times to achieve an equivalent lifespan to the LED, you’d still have only spent $2.58 in comparison to the LED’s $45 initial purchase price. As a side note, lighting industry experts expect the price of CFL’s to increase over the next few years due to a shortage of rare earth oxides. However, even with these increases, in many instances CFL’s will still be cheaper to purchase than LEDs.

LED Lighting: Lighting Factors Comparision

LEDs are just about everywhere: on your mobile phone, in your television remote and lighting up the buttons on the front of your DVD player. LEDs are so popular for these applications because they’re very efficient at converting energy to light on and they have a very long lifespan. As we went over above a single LED light is not adequate to light rooms in a home, you would need many diodes combined to make up a light source for a room. You can use these well with dimmers; they can brighten and dim very well. They will also work well with most timers. Sometimes with the cheaper of these bulbs, instead of going completely off, LEDs will glow slightly due to the small amount of current that LEDs require to illuminate. This could be irritating to some consumers, but this technology is still in its infant stages and you can expect that with time and research this product will improve greatly.

CFL Lighting: Lighting Factors Comparison

Compared to incandescents giving the same amount of visible light, CFLs use less power (one fifth to one third) and have a longer rated life (eight to fifteen times)². CFLs radiate a light spectrum that is different from that of incandescents. Improved phosphor³ formulations have improved the perceived color of the light emitted by CFLs, and some sources rate the best “soft white” CFLs as similar in color to standard incandescents. If you are looking for a way to light your home that is similar to the way your “old lightbulb” used to, this is the way to go.

Lighting Factors Comparison

The characteristics above pertain to the general and most commonly used types of each light source. There are poor, good, better, and best, within each technology. Good technology poorly deployed can produce a poor result. Fair technology well deployed can produce a great result. Consult with your lighting professional for a well-designed solution and technology choice for your application.

Hopefully, this has been able to show you the differences in light quality and cost a consumer can expect to decide upon when shopping for these newer types of bulbs. Not only are these bulbs great for energy efficiency, they are also becoming more and more pleasing to the eye with less “warm up” time or displeasing flickers.

Danielle Stewart writes for Precision Paragon, an energy efficient commercial LED lighting manufacturer and an expert in industrial lighting retrofits.

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