Gadgetory

a seeing that I'm right Kristen I'm here at these former residents of Thomas Edison here in Louisville Kentucky for 134 years his incandescent lightbulb reigns supreme but that is all starting to change thanks to recent legislation that mandates stricter efficiency standards for lighting and that means that new bulbs like LEDs and CFLs are starting to become the new normal this means that replacing your lights is going to be a whole lot different from here on out but don't worry because Cena's got you covered with a handy buying guide so come on let's talk some lights so with these new standards and these new bulbs you're going to need to know a little bit more about lighting when you make your next light bulb purchase they're going to be a much longer lasting appliance for you it's going to be more of an investment even if they cost more so you want to know what you're getting before you get it the first most important thing you need to learn is what a lumen is and that is a unit of brightness a lumen just tells you how bright a light is the more lumens of light has the brighter it's going to be so when you're looking at two bulbs and you want to compare exactly how bright they're going to be just look at the lumens don't worry about the wattage don't worry about anything else the lumens are going to tell you how bright it is the concrete number the more lumens the brighter it is and this is an easy thing to do these days because the Federal Trade Commission made sure that lighting manufacturers put lighting facts on the box and they've got these little labels that are just like nutrition facts on food so if you look at these two boxes we have an incandescent box here and a halogen box here the incandescent is a 60 watt and the halogen is a 60 watt replacement it's 43 watts but it's supposed to approximate a 60 watt incandescent the incandescent puts out 880 lumens and that's a good average number for what a incandescent should put out at 60 watts but the halogen only puts out 565 and that's pretty low so if you wanted a nice bright light that approximated the 60 watt incandescent here this halogen probably wouldn't be your best bet and understanding lumens will help you figure that out and shop around and get a better bulb the other principle that you're really going to want to know and understand is color temperature the way this works is you've got a scale of temperature from 2700 degrees Kelvin or so to 6,000 degrees Kelvin and the confusing part is that lights on this end of the spectrum low end are considered warm lights and as they get hotter in terms of color temperature they're called cool lights so it is confusing it's not ideal but just understand that warm lights are yellow on the low end of the spectrum and cool lights are blue on the high end of the spectrum incandescent have always lived here on the yellow end of the spectrum and CFLs and LEDs have been thought to sit on the blue end but that's not true anymore there are plenty of bulbs across the spectrum when it comes to CFLs and LEDs so you're going to have plenty of options so if someone tells you that the new energy standards mean the end of yellowy incandescent style light that's just simply not true to help you find these options to make it really easy the manufacturers even color code their packaging in many cases here are two bulbs from Sylvania or two packages for bulbs I should say this one's nice and yellow this one's blue and of course this is a low color temperature incandescent type light this is a high color temperature cool blueish very fluorescent light and finally you're going to want to be aware of the fact there are a lot of emerging smart light options on the market you can find bulbs you screw in and use Bluetooth or Wi-Fi to control from your phone bulbs you can connect with an existing home automation system like Insteon or nexia and sync up with your smart locks and with your thermostat and with all sorts of devices and they're really kind of cool to play with they add a lot of functionality and make your life a little easier there are also lights like the philips hue that change color on demand and are creative parties you can sync it up to your music and have all sorts of fun recipes with if2 going on it's just a lot of fun a little expensive and kind of a novelty but as novelties go this is one that I kind of love for more light bulb tips and guidance check out the rest of my buying guide and leave a comment let us know what you think about lights these days for seeing it I'm right Chris you