Looking for something that will actually light up a room. Is anything available – the equivalent of 100-150w old style?

I've tried some in the past but they've always seemed very yellow and dim.

Yes.

They vary a lot. Good ones are Phillips and GE. Ikea are crap, but even then they are not dim, they just take a while to warm up. I've got some here that come on full brightness instantly.

They come in different colours – some in yellowey to match incandescent ones, some daylight white. It looks weird if you mix and match though, as we found out 🙂

Blady blady blah

what a load of shat it is a con for the colder times of the year and here is my opinoin why

in the summer you hardly use lights but

95% of a incadesant lamp energy dissapates in heat so in the winter yer house is cold and your heating has to make up for the 95 watt of heat lost from a 100w lamp

Save in one hand spend the same from the other

Who leaves a 100W lightbulb on in their front room though, do you live in prison?

saladdodger…electric heating is VERY inefficient. If you don't believe me, turn of your gas central heating and buy a 3 bar electric fire for each room in the house.
Oh, you might also need to arrange an overdraft facility for the spring. 😈

saladdodger That depends on whether you really want to heat your ceiling…

And we don't have our heating on yet, but still need lights… But point taken.

jonb yes. Megaman are a good brand. They make good replacement fittings for low energy halogen downlights (and you can get rid of the transformers) and for candle bulbs. But we still have one room where we cannot get the right colour warmth from low energy bulbs and need old-fashioned 60w bulbs. The GU10 replacements are not brilliant and the LED ones we have tried suck.

I put them in the kids rooms as they love leaving lights on when they go to school etc!

The money I saved last year bought me an ice cream….

saladdodger That depends on whether you really want to heat your ceiling

but did you realise that heat rises well that is what I was taught at school 💡

If you have the heat at the ceiling, and then the heat rises, the heat from the light bulbs would never get to where you are sitting, would it?

If you have radiators, they radiate a lot of heat into the room. Radiant heat picked up from a lightbulb would be much less than that picked up from a radiator.

Don't buy cheap bulbs. Sounds like you are getting warm white bulbs(2700k), get something with a whiter(3500k) colour.

Kosnic do good LED GU10 replacement bulbs.

what a load of shat it is a con for the colder times of the year and here is my opinoin why

Very daily mail.

Quite expensive to buy, and I've found they don't last the stated burn times.
But they have to be cheaper to run than 50W halogen downlighters…….

I was going to suggest Kosnic. It's the only lamp of that type I sell now.
The cheap ones and those that you get free in the post are a total waste of time.

Quite expensive to buy, and I've found they don't last the stated burn times.

We have had problems with certain light fittings in our house. I think if your electrics are noisy or have dodgy connections it can cause them to burn out fast. They last forever for me.

10p from Tesco seems to do me fine. But then I don't really care what the shade of light is 😉

READ the packaging. Get the correct CCT (most want "warm"). Avoid in areas where the lights are not likely to be used for a min of 15 mins as this reduces the life of the lamp quite a lot.
The older ones were quite cold and took a long time to start up, the newer ones have improved quite a lot.

Who leaves a 100W lightbulb on in their front room though, do you live in prison?

100w is useful when you need a decent level of light. I use dimmer switches to obtain the optimum light level required for whatever activity i am participating in at any given moment.

All but bloody expensive energy saving bulbs aren't useable with dimmer switches. The ones that are tend to be shit.

Give me nice, bright planet-killing incandescents any time.

Your lounge?

All but bloody expensive energy saving bulbs aren't useable with dimmer switches. The ones that are tend to be shit.

Agreed, and the energy performance significantly falls when dimmed.

I've been using the free one's and I just fitted some of the the Ikea ones.

Two of our rooms have 8 bulb chandaliers in. 60w per bulb so if we found dimmable nice looking energy saving bulbs it might be worth it.

I'll try smoe of the suggestions above, anywhere online with a good range and free delivery. I only want a couple as the toilets can keep the cheap ones for now. Got plenty of 50w downlights too (20 odd?) so I'll look into those.

100w is useful when you need a decent level of light.

Or 13W of CFL 🙂

People think they are dim because older ones started off dim. They didn't realise that they got bright eventually.

Again, does not apply to decent newer ones.

Your lounge?

Please, I'm not that bourgeois!

Actually my 'living room' has a total of 600W of halogen spotlight madness. I use small lamps in there unless i need to find something I've dropped or whatever.

Iyou want to save electricity, LED is the way to go, not very cost effective though.

95% of a incadesant lamp energy dissapates in heat so in the winter yer house is cold and your heating has to make up for the 95 watt of heat lost from a 100w lamp

True, but a boiler is more efficient at producing heat and a unit of gas is cheaper than a unit of electricity.

The best thing to do is to insulate and draft proof your house. That'll more than compensate for the loss of heating by your lighting.

Also, turning your thermostat down a degree or two will save you a packet.

I shaved around 15% off the number of units of energy I use by turning unused appliances and lights off, turning the thermostat down and slightly shortening the period of time the heating is on.

More recently i have been fitting loe enegy lamps. I get mine in the Range for £0.99. 14w are very bright.

LED is the way to go

I know. Our kitchen has four GU10s in it – when we got the fitting we had to get the first GU10 CFLs available, which are crap – take ages to warm up.

I really want the LED 4W GU10s but they are £30 apiece 🙁

Only 60w at the moment, but more efficient than flourescent and don't take time to warm up.
19 quid each though 😯

You can get 8w (75w) GU10's here for £33

Bloody things ar useless. save me electricty , do the ****. I leave the damn things on all day as I haven't got the patience to wait whilst the come up to full speed. if you just go in and out but need light they are no good at all whereas a nice old 100w jobby was perfect, on and off for a second or two. pure EU *********

If you have the heat at the ceiling, and then the heat rises, the heat from the light bulbs would never get to where you are sitting, would it?

Convection. GCSE combined science. Was anyone on STW actually present at school or were you all too caned off your tits / busy worrying about our lizard overlord's plans for false terror attacks? 😆

As far as I can tell, no CFLs are any good. After a while, they all take too long to warm up, and the light they give off is poor – a normal bulb is more or less full spectrum, fluorescents are nowhere near. See below:

I'd be amazed if you can't order in proper bulbs from somewhere or other – Isle of Man perhaps? If not, you can now get Halogens packaged as standard bayonet fittings. They chuck out a nice light.

a boiler is more efficient at producing heat and a unit of gas is cheaper than a unit of electricity.

Again, GCSE Science. A bulb turns electricity into heat and light. It's near 100% efficient at that task – there is no wasted energy as noise or going out of the exhaust.

As far as I remember, a gas boiler is something like 70-80% efficient. But of course, gas is cheaper than electricity for the same amount of energy.

A central heating boiler will be in the range of 20-30kW. A 100W bulb will be turning around 15W into light, and the rest into heat. So it's an expensive way to get 85W of heat, but it'll be a drop in the ocean at the side of the heating bill proper.

Who ever had 100W bulbs anyway? We never had more than 60W in the 'Big Light', but never used them anyway.

3 40W-equivalent lamps is plenty in our living room.

3 40W-equivalent lamps is plenty in our living room.

Oddly enough, one high powered bulb is more efficient than several smaller ones.

Oddly enough, one high powered bulb is more efficient than several smaller ones.

Three lamps at a lower level give a much nicer spread of light that one at the ceiling. Total of about 33W in the living room, energy-wise.

If you're knitting, doing jigsaws or reading Peoples' Friend, I can see the need for a bright bulb.

😉

We've got quite a few energy saving bulbs in varoius places. I don't know the make, but the one in our bedroom warms up in about 2-3 seconds and is very bright indeed. No different from a normal bulb that I can see. 🙂

I have a mixture of Philips, Osram and Megaman upstairs.

The ultra small ones that fit in the same profile as a normal incandescent take many minutes to warm up. Need a 100W equivalent to light the loo, and that still takes 3 minutes before acceptable light level (maybe 40W equivalent light), and a good 5-10mins for near full brightness.

Another one glows and flashes randomly after it's turned off (Philips or Osram, forget which). Annoying if it's in the bedroom.

I'm gradually swapping what was 60W incandescent for 3 clusters of 20W halogen. At least they let me see.

I use them everywhere, but be careful. The cheap ones are sometimes nothing like as efficient as they claim.

I had one of those mains power meters. A set of 6x4Watt Ikea bulbs in my kitchen was using about 70 watts.

I have found branded ones much closer to their claims for power consumption.

I had one of those mains power meters

I wonder if your power meter was not reading things properly. Power is not volts x amps in an AC circuit with capacitive loads such as CLFs.

The ultra small ones that fit in the same profile as a normal incandescent take many minutes to warm up

Not necessarily mate. There are good ones.