Fortunately, this story is not about one of my many screw ups. It’s about a friend of mine who just built a brand new house on the water. He found a killer two for one deal on off brand screw in fluorescent bulbs or CFLs. He couldn’t resist. What he ended up with is a disaster. In his beautiful palatial living room with an extremely high ceiling, he now has a polka dot effect with his mix of warm and cool colors.

He’s unhappy, and will ultimately change them. That cost will be not only for the new bulbs, but also a fair amount of time due to their height. To make matters worse, there is a warm up time for the bulbs to reach full light output. So, for the first three or four minutes after the bulbs are turned on, his hallway, kitchen, and bathrooms are dimly lit thus creating a dungeon effect.

Having run a lighting supply and design business for years, I learned a few things about the subject. Fluorescents lighting is wonderful in certain applications because you get a lot of light for the buck (cost per kilowatt). With the exception of table lamps used for accent, the only fluorescent fixtures I use are the standard four foot type. The bulbs for these fixtures come in an array of colors. You can get smoky barroom yellows and stark operating room whites. There are also bulbs that will yield color rendering like the sun at noon. These are great for SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder) sufferers.

In my humble opinion, most work areas are best lit with fluorescents. That would be kitchens, laundry rooms, work shops, garages, and game rooms where pool or ping pong type games are played. I’ve noticed many kitchen designs today are being lit with teensy quartz halogen bulbs tucked deep inside a fixture. The color is wonderful, the light output sucks particularly and tucked deep inside a long tunnel shaped fixture that absorbs most of the light. Couple those fixtures and bulbs with black granite countertops and I’d probably lop my fingers off trying to see to cut lettuce for a salad.

In both my homes I have fluorescents in the kitchens and laundry room. I use dimmable incandescent in the dining room fixtures. I like a nice light over the sink in the kitchen. That way I can shut off the main lighting, dim the dining room lights and have a nice subdued dinner if I choose. My bathrooms are well lit with incandescent and I like a shower light. My laundry room is lit with fluorescents (four footers) in one home and with an attractive ceiling mounted round fixture in the other (it’s a small laundry room). I use CFLs in my table lamps and I have a quartz halogen task light for the study.

One error many people make in choosing their lighting is thinking exclusively in terms of appearance. They don’t consider the purpose behind lighting, the ability to see when the sun goes down. For this reason, when I designed the lighting for a home, I used a lot of dimmers. That way the owner had the best of both worlds; really good lighting when they needed it and subdued lighting when they didn’t. I also never supplied them with off brand bulbs. I made that mistake only once.