Thomas Edison’s electric light bulb, that is, the incandescent light bulb, has been in existence for over one hundred years. In fact, the availability of electric light changed how residences and various other locations were illuminated in the United States and other parts of the world.
However, the measurement of how brightly the light bulb illuminated tended to be represented on light bulb package labeling in the United States in watts. This labeling practice is changing.
The Federal Trade Commission of the United States announced that in the year 2011, the package labels for light bulbs will represent the bulb’s brightness in lumens, not watts. Lumens is a measure of brightness, while watts is a measure of energy consumption.
Consumers got an indication from the watts consumed by an incandescent light bulb of how bright the bulb would illuminate. As the wattage increased, so did the brightness of the light bulb.
Modern day energy efficient light bulbs provide more lumens while using less energy. This fact is exemplified by a typical 60 watt incandescent light bulb that provides 840 lumens. By comparison, an energy efficient compact fluorescent bulb that provides 60 more lumens than the typical aforementioned incandescent light bulb, that is, 900 lumens, consumes 47 fewer watts, or 13 watts.
Fewer watts are used by the energy efficient compact fluorescent while providing more lumens than the 60 watt incandescent. Therefore, watts is no longer necessarily an accurate measure of how bright a light bulb will shine. Lumens is a more accurate measure of how bright a light bulb will illuminate.
The wattage used by the bulb used to be one factor consumers looked for when shopping for light bulbs in the United States, prior to the availability of energy efficient lighting. Although watts is a well known term and the term lumens is less well known, it too will become a well known term with the pending changes to the labels on light bulb packages.
Evolving are the options for home lighting, as time progresses and technologies advance. As a consequence, the need to provide more accurate labeling of light bulbs has arisen to reflect a more accurate representation of light bulb brightness as well as marketplace changes.
Ben Smith enjoys writing about home lighting. He contributes informative articles about lighting home interiors and exteriors to lighting websites.