Think About Lighting In Your New Home

Gone are the days when the 60-watt, frosted screw-in light bulb was the primary source of lighting in the home, with the other contenders trailing far behind. Modern technology has made great strides in lighting in recent years and a knowledgeable expert in lighting can use those advances to make your home glow.

Determining what's right for all of the many activities that take place in the home, and just what kind of lighting will work best in various parts of the house, is not always easy. Many factors need to be considered, and how they work together can be on the tricky side. But it is well worth the effort to find the lighting solutions that will brighten your home.

With more lighting options for the home than ever before and with the demand for electrical power steadily growing with the size of the U.S. population, common fluorescent lamps may not be receiving the attention they deserve. That is the opinion of one lighting designer, Eric Strandberg, who has made the science of illumination his life's work.

For the past three years, the nation's home builders have been meeting annually at the National Green Building Conference. With an emphasis on construction methods that are more environmentally sensitive and on home systems that are healthier and more energy efficient, green building represents the wave of the future. It is also a movement that is finding common applications in homes that appear to be being built more traditionally.

Speaking at the most recent of these conferences last March, Strandberg was able to throw an ample amount of light on residential design options. If he made one point, it was that fluorescent lighting is clearly superior to the common incandescent light bulb, which he characterized as "a flame in a bottle." He noted that only 10 percent of the energy that goes into an incandescent bulb comes out as light; the rest is heat. "Ninety percent of the energy is wasted," he said.

Fluorescent lights suffer from a somewhat tarnished reputation because people don't like their tendency to flicker and buzz. But using an electronic ballast instead of the traditional magnetic ballast will solve the problem.

Large fluorescent lamps come in three standard sizes; Strandberg recommended using the T-8 size (with a 1-inch diameter) over T-12s (1-1/2 inches in diameter) because they can provide more light at a lower wattage and have improved color quality.

Regular fluorescent tubes are best suited for lighting spaces. Where an old-fashioned incandescent light bulb is appropriate, compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs) should be considered as an alternative, he said.

Made of two smaller tubes with a single end, these are similar in size, shape, light distribution and light quality to an incandescent lamp. However, they are considerably more energy-efficient. A 17-watt screw-in CFL provides about as much light as a 60-watt incandescent, but it can last for 10,000 hours compared to 1,000 hours for an incandescent. At a rate of five cents per kilowatt hour (the rate is higher in many parts of the country), the CFL has a life cycle cost of $18.50 compared to $35 for the incandescent.

While there are big cost savings down the road, purchasing the CFL is more expensive. The cost of a CFL bulb is in the $10 range compared to about 50 cents for an everyday 120-volt frosted light bulb.

(A regular fluorescent tube is good for an estimated 20,000 hours.)

Strandberg conceded that no matter how strong the advantages of fluorescent lighting, it is not suitable for every application in the home.

And it is hardly the final word in residential lighting. "With even the best light sources only 25 percent efficient," Strandberg said, there's ample room for more progress in good lighting design.

For more information, visit www.lightingdesignlab.com.

2008 Built Green Colorado

Home Builders Association of Metro Denver, 9033 E. Easter Place, Suite 200, Centennial, CO 80112
(303) 778-1400 fax: (303) 733-9440  info@builtgreen.org

Last Updated: 04/10/2004