When a lot of people go to buy their lightbulbs, they often just read the wattage, or the wattage equivalent if they’re buying an LED or CFL bulb. This is important because the wrong wattage can damage a light fixture. But a lightbulb box has a lot more information than the bulb’s wattage. Here’s how to read lightbulb labels.
Brightness
The first thing you may see is the lightbulb’s brightness expressed in lumens. The higher the lumen number, the brighter the lightbulb.
Estimated Yearly Energy Cost
This simply tells you how much it costs to run your lightbulb for a certain number of hours a day and the supposed cost of a kilowatt/hour. Some labels show three hours a day for a few pennies per kilowatt hour, for example. This looks good, but you certainly have more than one lightbulb in your home, and it’s also possible that you have them on more than three hours a day. You may also see an ENERGY STAR symbol on the label. ENERGY STAR is a program run by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) that encourages energy efficiency. Energy-efficient appliances and lightbulbs display this symbol.
Life Span
Again, the life span of your lightbulb is based on the number of hours it’s in use. The same LED bulb mentioned above should have a life span of close to 14 years if you use it only three hours a day.
Light Color or Temperature
Light color, or temperature, is measured in Kelvins and ranges from warm to cool. Not quite the same as brightness, it is expressed in thousands of degrees. This can understandably confuse people, because 4000K, for example, seems rather hot. It’s just good to know that a color temperature that’s 2000K or less is dim and yellowish, while 6500K and up is brilliant and blue. If you want a lightbulb whose light most resembles daylight, you’d buy one whose color temperature is about 5200K.
Energy Used
This can also be a little tricky to understand when it comes to the difference between LED and incandescent lightbulbs. Watts describe how much energy the lightbulb uses. Since LED bulbs use far less energy than incandescent bulbs, the wattage when it comes to energy used may be low. For example, an LED bulb that uses only 10 watts of power can substitute for an incandescent bulb that uses 60.
Contact Us to Learn More About Your Lightbulbs
As taken for granted as they often are, lightbulbs can be quite fascinating. If you want to learn more about lightbulbs or need lighting services, get in touch with our experienced electricians at Wire Works in Lansing, MI.
