Lamp Guide

There are many different types of lighting requirements and different lamps serve different purposes.

Incandescent Lamps
This is the everyday lighting produced with normal light bulbs, available in clear or frosted, clear being particularly suited where the filament can act as a starry effect like in chandeliers and frosted meant for use in fittings with shades. Although the cheapest lamp to buy they tend to distort true colour tending to give a warmish glow but can make a room feel warm. They are also the least energy efficient with approximately 95% of the power consumed by an emitted as heat, rather than as visible light and will only last on average 1000 hours.

Low Voltage Lamps
Low voltage lighting is becoming increasingly popular for domestic application particularly in living areas, kitchens and gardens as the lamps offer good colour rendering properties, producing a crisp white light. It also has the benefit of reduced running costs giving roughly 2-3 times the light output, a 50w lamp is roughly the equivalent of 125w of incandescent light. Low voltage lamps are manufactured to last at least 2000 hours.

Fluorescent Lamps
Fluorescent lighting is far more energy efficient than incandescent lighting, this is because a greater proportion of power is converted to light and a smaller proportion is converted to heat. Many people find the color spectrum produced by some fluorescent lamps to be displeasing although lamps are available in a wide range of colour rendering properties, the most common being white, warm white or cool white. Although the initial cost of the lamp is more expensive this is more than compensated for by lower energy consumption over its life giving roughly 5 times the light output, a 25w lamp is roughly the equivalent of 125w of incandescent light and will last for at least 10,000 hours.

Discharge Lamps
Commonly used for industrial and commercial purposes as the lighting produced is high output, making these metal halide type lamps a powerful and efficient light source. This type of lighting produces an almost white light with excellent colour rendering properties. Although one of the most expensive types of lighting, this is one the most energy efficient giving roughly 8 times the light output, a 50w lamp is roughly the equivalent of 400w of incandescent light and will last for at least 6,000 hours.

LED Lamps
This is the latest type of lighting being developed and is slowly changing the face of lighting. Although yet to achieve the brightness of incandescent lighting, due to their tiny size, when used in a cluster LED's are bright enough to use for illumination and different colours can be used together to create colour changing effects. LED's are far more energy efficient than incandescent lamps and although they are difficult to gave an exact match they produce roughly 5 times the light output, a 1w LED is roughly equivalent to 5w of incandescent light will last at least 100,000 hours.

Bulb brightness in Lumens
100 watt bulb is rated at approximately 1700 lumens
60 watt incandescent bulb is rated at approximately 800 lumens
40 watt bulb is rated at approximately 400 lumens
25 watt bulb is rated at approximately 180 lumens
4 watt night light bulb is rated at approximately 20 lumens