Hi DavidDC
I've been using the IKEA brand CFL's. They weren't too expensive and came in lots of wattages. The light quality is fairly warm compared with the usual blaring white that most CFL's have. I prefer a whiter light, but not a strenuous glare so I'm liking the slightly warm note of these bulbs. They are coated with something rubbery and frosted, I guess silicone of some type. The one draw back is warm up time, but that seems fairly common for all CFL's. I am thinking of trying some LED bulbs in a few crucial locations that I need bright light fast (foyer, laundry room, etc.) Those suckers are pricey, but should be worth the eventual savings, not to mention not having to replace them in my lifetime. If you are at all interested in LED's here's a link.
http://www.ledlight.com/?gclid=CNv7g--si4oCFRxdQAodvFkxew
as a lighting
designer i would say; buy lamps of a major company that assures you the quality needed; these are GE, Sylvania, Osram and Philips. Other lamps will have bad lightoutput, bad lifetime, sometimes overheating, ... . If you want to refit your options are a bit down; you should use cfl that has the same fittings as the glowwirelamps. As for the link thatolive send; do not believe what is mentioned on the site 'lifetime of 60.000hrs'; leds last 5000hr (okay 5mm through hole leds last 50000hrs and this means that only 50% of them will actually work; if you have leds that are of the other 50% they don't even last that long and 5mm leds (the blinking stuff in your remote control etc) do not really give any light.
Good to know
gerrit, thanks for the info on the real lifespan of LEDs. But, I do need to take issue with the idea that one needs to buy from the big corporations to get good quality. The IKEA bulbs are really very good. I've not had any overheating issues and the light output seems good once they've warmed up. Some of the bulbs I've had in place for 4+ years with daily use. Only once did I buy one that burned out in a day and IKEA took it back, no problem. I've had worse luck with GE Reveals and plain old incandescents!
a few years ago it were...
a few years ago it were halogenlamps that were very in (the 'mr16'); i then had the oppurtunity to lay my eyes on a comparitive study about philips and osram bulbs compared with chinese production. it appeared that these copycats overheated by more then 100°C which could be dangerous because the luminaires would not resists these high temperatures. with cfl this heating problem does not really exist. however in ledlighting there are also a few companies (lumiled, nichia, cree, edison, ...) that are reliable; other smaller (asian) producers do not have the same lightoutput or lifetime or they overheat (it is false to believe that leds do not heat; heating is one of the biggest problems with leds but the heat goes backwards as with common reflector lamps the heat goes forward)
If you need any help, please contact us at – info@designaddict.com