Greener Lighting

Among all of the lighting options available on the market, lighting designer Gary Gordon says there is one that pros should dismiss entirely from their repertoire: “There’s no reason anyone should be using the standard household incandescent bulb anymore,” says the principal of New York City–based Gary Gordon Lighting. “It’s far too energy-inefficient to be used anywhere.”

As residential appliances and HVAC systems become more efficient, lighting is making up a larger portion of a home’s electric bill, according to Jeff Dross, senior product manager for Kichler Lighting. So both the building industry and legislators are looking for ways to reduce the energy consumed by residential lighting. In fact, the federal government recently passed a bill that will outlaw many popular wattages of incandescent bulbs in 2012 because they are so inefficient.

But once you’ve sent the old-fashioned bulb packing, choosing a new lighting strategy becomes a trickier decision. While there are plenty of energy-efficient options and lots of high-quality lighting, it can be difficult to find products that meet both criteria. We’ve sorted through the major lighting options to identify their environmental attributes and help you decide what fits best in your next project.

Compact Fluorescent Lamps

The most cost-effective and energy-efficient alternative to incandescent bulbs, compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs) have been capturing the most mainstream attention the past few years. The lamps have an efficacy (a measurement of the light produced compared with the energy used to produce it) of 60 lumens per watt to 70 lumens per watt, making them about four to five times more efficient than incandescents.

It’s important to note that these fluorescents are not the ones with the greenish cast that lit hospitals and high-school science classes in decades past. The hums, buzzes, and flutters are gone, along with the magnetic ballast that made the lights run. Today’s fluorescents use an electronic ballast that runs silently. They also feature three phosphors, instead of two, so they can offer a range of color temperatures, including colors very close to traditional incandescents.

Bulbs that screw into a traditional socket are available, and you can even buy a screw-in CFL that dims with a standard incandescent dimmer, though CFLs that dim well may be too expensive for some homeowners.

But to qualify for Energy Star, compact fluorescent fixtures must have specific pin-type bases, called GU24, that fit only CFLs; these fixtures prevent homeowners from reverting to incandescents. While slightly more expensive, pin-based CFLs withstand heat better than screw-in CFLs, and should last for 10,000 hours, or about seven years of normal use, versus about 6,000 hours for screw-in lamps.

Compact fluorescents present several practical and design challenges: Some manufacturers still offer fewer fixture options for CFLs than for incandescents, the bulbs must warm up to achieve full brightness, color quality is variable, and it can be confusing for homeowners to choose the ideal color temperature. Also, quality dimmable CFLs are not only expensive, they do not dim to a warm glow like incandescents.

The environmental (and most publicized) downside of compact fluorescent lamps is their mercury content. According to the EPA, CFLs contain an average of 4 milligrams of mercury, some of which can be released into the air or water if the bulb is disposed of in a landfill and can create a health hazard if the bulb is broken inside the home. However, some manufacturers are now offering lamps with low mercury content of 1.4 milligrams to 2.5 milligrams, and a variety of retailers, including The Home Depot, offer reclamation bags in which consumers can recycle their CFLs.

Even if CFLs are sent to a landfill, they result in less mercury in the environment over the life of the bulb, the EPA states. Emissions from coal-fired electrical power are the main source of mercury emissions in the U.S., the agency explains, and CFLs save so much electricity that their mercury content is lower than that of the emissions used to power equivalent incandescent bulbs.

LEDs

A much different source of light than incandescents or CFLs, LEDs (light emitting diodes) are actually tiny, encapsulated semi-conductors that can last for 30,000 hours to 50,000 hours or more.

While LEDs are widely known as colored indicator lights in items such as computer monitors or car dashboards, in recent years manufacturers have begun to offer them in shades of white and grouped in the shape of a light bulb so they can be screwed into traditional fixtures or replace incandescent downlights. But they’ve been most successful so far as accent lights built into a fixture or surface.

While LEDs are not yet as efficient as compact fluorescents—their efficacy is between 30 lumens per watt and 60 lumens per watt—manufacturers and government researchers are investing millions of dollars in advancing them. LED efficiency is improving by about 100% every 24 months, estimates Joseph A. Rey-Barreau, a lighting designer and associate professor at the College of Design at the University of Kentucky. “In five to 10 years, it may be the most predominant light source everywhere,” he says.

At five to 10 times the cost of compact fluorescent fixtures, large LED fixtures are still out of the price range of most residential applications. But designers say they are using small LEDs in cove, undercabinet, and step lighting applications. In years to come, organic LEDs (LEDs stretched into thin films) could change the way we see lighting entirely, allowing designers to stretch a light source across a wall or ceiling and turning fixtures and sockets into a remnant of the past.

Halogen

While CFLs are generally the most energy- and cost-efficient option, they’re still not the best choice where color quality or dimmability is most important. Halogen lights, a more efficient form of incandescent, provide warm, bright light and are fully dimmable, meaning they may be best for applications such as dining rooms or reading lights where color quality is the biggest concern. Philips Lighting’s Halogena, for example, offers energy savings of about 30% over standard incandescents, and are rated to last about 3,000 hours.

Lighting Controls

Efficient lighting goes beyond the bulb, with simple control systems that help save energy with little notice by the homeowner.

Switched motion sensors or dimmers should be used with any remaining fixtures that still use incandescent sources; they also can be used with energy-efficient sources. Switched motion, or vacancy, sensors must be manually turned on, but they automatically shut off after a period of time with no motion in the room. Dimmers save a percentage of energy slightly less than the amount they are dimmed, for both incandescent and fluorescent sources (i.e., dimming a bulb 25% saves about 20% of the electricity). Energy savings from dimming LEDs is variable.

Whole-house, intelligent lighting systems allow builders to automate a home’s lighting controls by setting lights to automatically dim 10% or 15%, or allowing homeowners to shut off all of a home’s lights with the push of a button. Lutron has a control system that includes a “green” button that trims light levels down throughout the home.

Jeffrey Lee is a freelance writer in Washington, D.C.