And now it begins . . . the business lunches are done; the clients are schmoozed; the final Xmas toasts have been toasted. All that’s left is . . . family, friends and neighbours – and that perennial hunting call of ‘What is it you do, then?’
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I’m encouraged to write this short piece of guidance at the behest of a client. Finally, after far too long, the new house is finished, a family Xmas lunch is planned and the lighting does – I have to say – look gorgeous. So where’s the grief?
“I like the idea of LEDs, but why can’t I simply ask for the light bulbs I need. Why are there SO MANY different types that I can’t work out what I need. And what the hell is a lumen??”
While we’re contentedly bouncing around in our professional bubbles there’s little opportunity for this kind of crass knee-kicking to get through to us. Xmas is a different matter. That strange new friend of your cousin; your deficient Uncle Donald; even your old granny (for who you can do no wrong) will have a story about how ‘buying a bulb’ is a nightmare comparable to being fitted with a catheter.
This is not intended as a how-to-handle your familial relationships, but I thought it might help as a crib sheet that you simply hand over to them as the need arises.
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A friendly guide to buying a light bulb
A bulb is a lamp, but a table lamp is not a bulb, it’s a fixture. This is a deliberate attempt to confuse the innocent and to give the professional the appearance of a deeper wisdom. We will, from hereon, call a bulb a bulb and hope that no gardeners are reading.
NOTE: for clarity, I’m assuming that we’re all talking about ordinary light bulbs (of the General Lighting Service variety) – we’ll have none of those hipster-historic crazy shapes here, thank you very much. A bulb must also look like a bulb. I may allow candle-shapes . . . I’ll leave that with you.
In ye olde days, the choices were simple: a clear bulb or a pearl bulb – and a wattage to tell you how bright it is. And that is still the case, though all of the numbers have changed.
The clear bulb: this will be a filament version of the LED lamp. It will be a warm colour, but it might look a bit bright in the wrong fixture – so be careful how you use it. Oh yes – and the glass bulb will probably be plastic; they’re nearly all like that, not just the cheap crap. This, in itself, can appear confusing.
The pearl bulb: will now be an opal bulb. It will be a denser white than the soft pearlised glass. But there’s another thing to look at, and that’s the way that the opal bulb is mounted on the cap. Some opal bulbs look very much like our old friends and the light more-or-less comes out all the way around, but SOME of these have a solid ‘cup’ at the bottom (or top, depending on which way you’re holding it) so the opal bulb itself is only a hemisphere. This interrupts the way that the light comes out of the bulb. In the wrong fixture this can look a complete mess.
The bulb colour: is something that we never worried about before, because everything was the same. No more! Users of some early LED bulbs suffered because a lot of those bulbs had a cold white light – much like some fluorescent tubes (remember those?).
If you are looking for the ‘traditional’ light colour then you’re looking for 2700K (K? What is K? We measure light colour in degrees Kelvin. ‘Nuff said.). It WILL be on the packaging. Numbers higher than 2700K will be cooler and there are still quite a few of those around; numbers lower than 2700K are rare, but those that you may find are delving down towards candlelight.
The wattage: when all bulbs were basically a hot wire in a glass bulb, rating the light output by wattage made a kind of sense and everyone knew what a 60W bulb looked like. The way that LED bulbs are made does not permit that kind of certainty; we have been obliged to change our references. Maybe it would have been easier to rate light bulbs by their light output from day one, but that ship sailed a long time ago. We’re late, but we’re here at last.
Simple rule of thumb: light output is measured in lumens. It has to be measured in something and litres and metres don’t work, so we needed a name that fits. ‘Lumen’ works because it comes from the Latin for light; classical scholars understand this.
The old tungsten lamps provided about 10 lumens for each watt of power. So, a 60W bulb provided 600 lm (lm is the abbreviation of lumen – who knew!). And now you have the root of all knowledge when it comes to deciding how much light you need!
All light bulb packaging WILL have the lumen output marked clearly on the box. If it doesn’t, don’t buy it.
Where to buy from: it used to be easy to say something like ’only use a recognised brand’. But that’s another ship that’s sailed, in the wake of the one that took wattage ratings with it.
Supermarkets tend to stay with ‘known’ brands. Most high street hardware shops will have a range of branded LED lamps that you may not recognise – or, perhaps, a brand that you don’t associate with light bulbs. If you trust the owners of the hardware shop not to close their doors and disappear, then give them the benefit of the doubt – but be aware that you might have to go back and argue the toss if the bulb fails ‘early’.
How long should these bulbs last: there should be one of those Energy Rating graphics on the box. At the bottom of the graphic it will tell you what the expected life is, measured in hours. If you’re able, take an indelible marker pen and write (in a discreet corner of the bulb) the date when you fit the bulb.
What you need to have an idea of is the number of hours that you’re likely to be using the bulb. There are 8760 hours in a year, so you’re unlikely to use the lamp for more than 4000 hours – and that’s a lot in a domestic setting, so that bulb in your hand should work for 5 – 10 years, depending on the number on the box.. That’s why it was important to white the date on the bulb in the first place, because by the time it fails you probably won’t remember what year you fitted it.
Unless it fails a couple of months after you bought it – in which you have an argument with your retailer!
WARNING: if the packaging doesn’t include an energy rating graphic – don’t buy it!
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And I think that’s about it. I suggest that you print a few of these out and keep them folded in a jacket pocket, or at least within easy reach. By the time your persecutor has read to the end another bottle of prosecco will have been opened and the conversation shifted to whether Southgate should stay as England manager.
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Merry Xmas t’ye all.
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