Buckle your seatbelts. More states are mandating restrictions on certain lighting products, essentially banning the sale of some light bulbs.
Practical advice on commercial lighting from LED retrofits to lighting design.
Scroll down for our latest posts.
A state by state look at light bulb bans [Interactive map]
Topics: LED, Code enforcement, Incandescent lighting
Is there an incandescent bulb ban? Right now, it depends on where you live.
Topics: Lighting 101, FAQs, Incandescent lighting
If you live in California, you can say goodbye to some incandescent and halogen light bulbs.
The California Energy Commission banned the sale of inefficient light bulbs starting January 1, 2020.
Topics: LED, California Energy Code, Incandescent lighting
Common incandescent light bulbs and LED retrofits by application
There's a long and heated debate about the use of incandescent light bulbs. We have debunked the myth that incandescent bulbs were banned in the US, but the reality is that efficiency standards have changed the way consumers shop for lighting.
And with changing efficiency standards come changes in product availability.
Regardless of your stance on the political side of this issue, we still need light in our homes, offices, schools, gyms, airports – you get the idea. So, we get regular questions about where to buy incandescent light bulbs or what the best options are for converting to LED.
We're interested in making lighting easier for our customers, so we've put together a list of the most common places you might find an incandescent bulb along with links for where you can buy either the incandescent product or a compatible LED upgrade.
Topics: Product Comparison, LED, Energy efficiency, Hotel lighting, Incandescent lighting, LED retrofit, Multifamily lighting
Answering your questions on light color and quality [Ask the expert series]
Our lighting designers answer countless questions when it comes to helping their customers understand light color and quality. Lighting Design Manager, Tori Cole, is here to help simplify some of the complexity around design, color quality, and LED lighting. Follow along as she answers some of the most common questions.
Topics: Lighting design, CRI, Color temperature, Fluorescent light, Incandescent lighting
How to read a light bulb part number: incandescent lamps
Growing up in Japan, I learned quite a bit about the challenges that come with learning a second language. I remember having both English-speaking and Japanese-speaking friends and being the translator between the two groups. And I had to work hard to make sure information didn't get lost in translation.
Oftentimes, there were tricky moments for me, as the translator. Like, when my English-speaking friends would tell a joke while smiling, that smile was perceived as nervousness by my Japanese friends. The cultures were so different, each having so many nuances, that most communications had challenges like that. I was constantly trying to figure out how to accurately capture the intent, the context, and proper body language from the native culture and properly translate it for the other culture.
Topics: Lighting 101, Wattage, Incandescent lighting, Light bulb part numbers
What is halogen and how is it different than incandescent?
You may have heard about the light bulbs that are too hot to handle. Or perhaps you have heard them referred to as the lamps that have a bulb within bulb – similar to a dream within a dream, huh?
These are called halogens.
How do halogen lamps emit artificial light? Where should you use halogen lamps? Where does halogen fit into the lighting industry?
Let’s answer those questions and dive into the pros and cons of halogen technology.
Topics: Lighting 101, Halogen, Incandescent lighting
What is an incandescent light bulb and how does it work?
Think about the last time you were at a store buying a microwave or some other appliance, like a refrigerator or a dryer. The sales associate probably rattled off a bunch of the product’s features. They probably demonstrated what it could do, talked about pricing and upgrades, and leaned on their usual talking points.
Our technologically advanced day and age has filled our lives with a bunch of equipment with functionality that most of us probably couldn’t begin to explain in any kind of detail. Sure, we can thumb around on our iPhone’s apps and show our grandmothers how Instagram and FaceTime work, but could we ever explain the device’s technological makeup?
Topics: LED, Lighting 101, Incandescent lighting, Multifamily lighting
LED gets a lot of airtime. That tends to happen when newer technology is making a splash on the open market.
Here, on the Lighting Insights blog, Regency authors have included “LED” in the headline of an article nearly 25 times to date and the acronym is included in almost every post.
But for all of the talk the technology gets – both here and elsewhere – how many people really know what LED is or how it works? What is LED?
For starters, LED stands for "light emitting diode."
Topics: LED, Lighting 101, Color temperature, Incandescent lighting
MIT’s ‘recycling light’ innovation may save the incandescent light bulb
Preliminary findings from researchers at MIT might signal a renaissance for incandescent light bulbs.
Just last week on this blog, in a post titled “Was there actually an incandescent light bulb ban?”, we wrote “it’s not too hysterical to prophesy of incandescent-less 2020s.” As we point out in that piece, the Energy Independence and Security Act will require incandescent lamps to be 60-70 percent more efficient in 2020 than they were in 2007, when EISA was signed into law. We suggested that those stringencies, along with recent price reductions in compact fluorescent bulbs (CFLs) and LEDs and the drastically longer lifetimes of those bulbs, might spell the eventual end for incandescents.
Topics: Inside the Industry, Incandescent lighting