Energy Efficient Lighting

When you are choosing the most energy efficient lighting for your home first decide what sort of light you need.

Will the lighting be used to light up space so you can see your way around comfortably? This type of lighting is known as ambient.

Is the lighting for aesthetics, to highlight pictures, paintings or other pieces of art? This type of lighting is termed accent lighting.

If the lighting is to brighten work areas such as the kitchen or a desk we call it task lighting.

No matter where in your home you need light there is an energy efficient option that can save you money.


There are now many different types of Compact Fluorescent Lamps (CFL's) available for all types of uses.

There are a large number of options for energy efficient recessed lighting.

Energy efficient track lighting can be used effectively as accent lighting and as task lighting depending on your need.


What's a watt and what's a lumen?

Although the lighting industry has always used watts to distinguish the strength of light bulbs on their packaging the watt is not a measure of light, it is a measure of energy use.

The Lumen is the measure of the power of light as seen by the human eye.

A 18 watt CFL bulb will give out about as much light as the old type incandescent bulb rated at 60 watt. A 28 watt CFL is equivalent to a 100 watt bulb.

When selecting your new lighting be sure to check that you are buying bulbs that give you the right color of light.

The quality of the color of artificial lighting is measured against the color of natural lighting.

There are two indicators we look for;

1) The color rendering index (CRI) is an indicator of how accurately colors will appear under artificial light. The CRI is measured on a scale of 1 to 100 where 100 is how colors look in daylight. The higher the CRI score of a bulb the better colors will appear under it.

2) The color temperature (CT) of the light lets you know if the light will have a warm orangey, red hue and give off a soft light or if it will have a cool feeling, bright blueish hue. The CT scale is measured in Kelvins. Warm hues have lower numbers of below 3100 K and cooler lights measure in at over 4000 K.



No matter what type of energy efficient lighting you use or where in your home you use it, there are an increasing number of simple and sophisticated lighting controls to help you conserve energy by ensuring your lights are on when they need to be, and off the rest of the time.

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