Choosing light bulbs for aesthetics

Now, when you’ve designed your new interior scheme and chosen your lighting, you don’t want to ruin everything by selecting ugly light bulbs. There are definitely different alternatives available for energy saving light bulbs with different technologies, energy consumption and aesthetics. Therefore, you should select your bulb for both its energy saving efficiency and aesthetics. Let’s look at some of the alternative light bulbs that strike a balance between aesthetics and efficiency.

halogen bulbs

Halogen bulbs are definitely aesthetically pleasing and will save around 30% on electricity costs compared to traditional incandescent bulbs. As an example, if you choose a clear halogen candle bulb for your chandelier, the clear light will really make the most of the sparkle of the crystals. So if you really want that aesthetic design edge then choose the candle flame tipped halogen bulb which will greatly enhance the look of your chandelier and the bulbs will really add to the overall appearance. Clearly, bulbs will never look like real candles with a bright flame, but the Flame Tip Candle Bulb’s simple and clean design is the best choice for an electric light bulb.

Compact Fluorescent Lamps – CFL

Energy efficient light bulbs using CFL technology are certainly good from an energy efficiency point of view, saving around 80% compared to a traditional incandescent bulb, but the aesthetics can be far from pleasing . This is fine if the bulb is hidden inside a fixture and not visible, but if the bulb is visible under the shade or there is no fixture at all, make sure you choose the correct option. The original linear CFLs look awful and now at least the full spiral energy bulbs have improved aesthetics, but the visual appearance is still far from ideal. The best option is to go for the CFL globe design and if you go for one with a nice spherical shaped energy saving bulb then the look can be very desirable. This way, you can get the best of both worlds with a beautiful bulb that will pay for itself in electricity savings in a matter of months. That has to be a win-win situation on the light bulb front!

led bulbs

If you want the ultimate in energy efficiency, the best option is the LED bulb, which will save you around 90% on electricity, although the initial outlay for the bulbs is considerably higher. However, consider appearance to ensure they are suitable for your lighting application. Now if you have a simple halogen recessed light, there are some very fancy MR16 LED bulbs available that will produce the equivalent of, say, 25W halogen output from a 3W LED. That’s a great energy efficient bulb and aesthetics is also good.

If you have a chandelier with, say, 20 bulbs, then if you use traditional 40 watt bulbs, it will draw a massive 800 watts, which is enough to heat the room if it’s not winter mod! This means that you really need an energy saving light bulb scheme. You can go for the halogen bulbs as mentioned above, but alternatively you could fit 3W LED candle flame bulbs which will give you a light output per bulb of around 25 watts. The aesthetic isn’t quite as nice as halogen bulbs, as the multiple LED lights can look high-tech, but if you incorporate that into your interior design scheme, the result can be quite nice.