LED Bulbs Are the Best Lighting Choice

Asked by Michael McCrystal, San Francisco, Calif.

ANSWER:

Pop Quiz: Watts, lumens, luminous efficacy and Kelvin temperature. Can anyone in the audience define each lighting term and how they relate to each other? Is a 1200-lumen bulb brighter or dimmer than a 100-watt incandescent? Will a 2780 K "warm" light accentuate my hazel eyes or make my skin look pallid and blotchy? And, are these snazzy new $40 LED bulbs efficient enough to justify the upfront cost?

You, like many consumers, are on the hunt for the perfect bulb: energy efficient, environmentally friendly and cost saving. Confusing labeling and terminology, however, is leaving many buyers boggled and possibly even causing default purchase of the shunned, yet familiar energy-grubbing incandescent.

As it turns out, the Federal Trade Commission has read your mind. In 2011, all light bulbs in the United States will require labels modeled after the nutrition labels on food packaging. I'll compare the construction, performance and lifecycle analysis of CFLs and LEDs in the Nitty Gritty answer. But here's what you'll need to know so that you don't get stuck buying the "trans fats" of the light bulb world.

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