When choosing your light bulb for your chandelier. You have a lot of choices to choose from. Including Incandescent, CFL and LED. Each bulb is very unique on how it looks and functions and they all let of light in different ways. Choosing one can be some what confusing and a little misleading. Here are a few tips to pick the right bulb and get light light out of it that you need.
The first thing you will want to identify on your chandelier is the type of bulb base that it uses. The three most common types are medium or A-19 base, Candelabra base and Pin base. If your chandelier has a pin base it will only accept the CFL bulb. Typically these are chandeliers that are energy star rated. So the CFL bulb is your only choice on the type of fixture. But if you have a medium or candelabra base you have a few options.
Your first option is the Incandecent bulb. Most of us are familiar with this type of bulb. This type of bulb typically come in wattages from 40 to a 100 watts. This is the standard on what all other bulbs are rated on. The problem with this type of bulb is that there are many new laws that are requiring manufactures to gradually phase these out of production.
The next bulb you might be familiar with is the CFL bulb. Many of us know this as the pig tail bulb. In the past the light was not so good on these and alot of them had to wait for the ballast to warm up before you received the full potential of illumination. This is not the case anymore, manufactures have created better ballast that allow the full potential of the bulb at start up. Many people did not like the color of light that the CFL bulb emitted. But know you have a full spectrum of light colors to choose from. Manufactures have improved the CFL bulb in two other drastic ways. One being that you can now purchase a dimable CFL. This is great for creating a romantic mood with your chandelier. They have also improved on the look of the bulb. Several companies like bulbbrite have gotten rid of the pig tail look and make the CFL look like a Standard Incandescent bulb.
Your last choice in bulbs is LED bulbs. These are still pretty new to the market but the are coming on in a strong way. Where as a traditional Incandescent bulb uses 75 Watts and a equivalent CFL uses 13 to 18 watts. The LED bulb will use 5 to 10 watts. The Initial problem with these bulbs was light distribution. In the first generation of bulbs the light was more focused. But with the new designs they perform very similar to a standard Incandescent bulb.
On many of the light bulb packages there are many things to look for when comparing them to a standard incandescent bulb. All of them have charts that so the Equivalence of a standard bulb. Such on a 13 watt CFL many bulbs compare to a 65 watt incandescent bulb, Or a 5 watt LED to a 65watt incandescent bulb. This can be very misleading as many of them do not have the same lumen output. So when purchasing a much more expensive bulb you with want to factor the cost, color of light and life of the bulb.
All of these basic light bulbs will work great in any chandelier that you choose.
