apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

Home Depot has candelabra sized CFLs - it was a no name brand, but I got some there a few months back. I had to search for them, but they were there and on sale 2 for$9. Good Luck

I already have to listen to my brother--him with the monster house 50 miles from his job, twin SUVs, an in-ground pool and a master suite the size of my whole apartment--preach at me for my irresponsible, wastrel ways & my dissipated love affair with incandescant bulbs. Now this. Great.

What if I don't want the equivalent of 60 watts of incandescant light? These bulbs are great--unless you happen to prefer the dim glow of a 60-watt incandescant cranked down to the output of a normal 13-watt bulb. That's how I've been conserving energy, even though I use evil, energy-sucking tungsten bulbs. I use dimmers.

Well, that and I don't have a car, a big screen TV, a humongous refrigerator, a dishwasher or a spa tub. But, hey, feel free to grab away my clear-filament tungsten bulbs, my one weakness. Thanks a lot, Al.

Don't take away my bulbs, big brother, don't. I light my doorway with a 7.5 watt bulb, while my neighbors have an energy saving CF that emits more nauseating light than a celestial star (at 20 paces, remember). We're being sold a bill of goods.

I'm as enviro-liberal as they come, but after replacing my closet and laundry room regular bulbs with CFL's, I hate them. Loathe them. Yuck.

They are initially dim. Yes, I know they eventually warm up, but most of the time I use my laundry room and closet it is less than 1-3 minutes at a time.

I also have a sensitvity to fluorescent lights and these so annoy my eyes. They hurt my eyes...even after a minute or two.

If this is the wave of the future, I need to figure out something fast...or else stockpile regular bulbs.

Although I use a couple of them (closet, etc...), you can count me as a CFL hater as well. Aside from the horribly unflattering light they produce, I hate the dim warm up period, the annoying flicker, the fact that I can't use a dimmer unless I invest in special expensive dimmable ones (which buzz like hell), and that they are so very ugly in chandeliers. I keep hoping LED technology puts CFLs to bed... forever. In the mean time, I will stick with the wasteful tungsten. Besides, my carbon use is 1/3rd less than the average US citizen, so I am not going to feel guilty.

I recall how, several years ago, the furnace repair man and I stood in the dark furnace room together while the CFL bulb slowly illuminated our faces and we could each see what the other would look like after he/she was dead.

I hate them and would sooner burn bowls of elephant dung for light.

I recommend people purchase the GE or Sylvania made CFLs if they've had bad experiences with the lighting quality. Make sure the bulbs are designated as soft whites. People often make the mistake of purchasing CFLs with the harshest whitest light, and of course, those aren't pleasing to the eyes. But I've replaced CFLs throughout my mom's house, and she's very sensitive to light quality, yet she said she couldn't tell the difference with the GE's.

These bulbs are getting better and better every year. Don't discount them because "several years ago" they didn't perform to the same standards as incandescents. The more people buy into using them, the more refined the technology becomes, just like every niche product that grows into a widely accepted product (remember when cell phones were the size of flatbed scanners and had the sound quality of tin cups?).

See...heres my problem. The bulbs are STILL too big for my 3 light kitchen fixture. Its not the coil part or the silver part that screws into the socket but that middle part, the part that says "sylvania" they are still too fat. My stupid pottery barn fixture has the socket way deep within the fixture. So I'm stuck.

Oh I forgot to mention...one of my long lasting bulbs just pooped out after less than 1 year.

I've had the occasional (cheap, IKEA) CFL crap out after only a year or so, but I've got others that have been in pretty much daily use for 3 years and are still goin' strong.

Even the cheap IKEA bulbs produce acceptable light now - far better than the models they were selling 5-7 years ago - and the latest soft white GE bulbs come surprisingly close to looking like soft white incandescents, at least to human eyes. I can still tell there's a difference between the two, but don't have a preference anymore.

dude, you people are spazzes. Some of the CFLs are ugly, but some of them are MUCH nicer light than incandescents. I'm a professional photographer - I get paid to make people and objects look good, and am very good at doing it. Incandescents give you that annoying "I'm in a seductive candlelit room" vibe that's gets old very fast. Try the 3000k bulbs for a change and see.

Plus, if you want to work with dimmers, get some tiny halogens. More efficient, same warm color temp. if you want to see the world in yellow-orange.