Top 7 Tips for Energy-Efficient Home Lighting

There are countless ways to reduce energy costs, but few are as easy as changing your home’s lighting. In fact, lighting consumes about 10 percent of the average home’s electricity use, and using energy-efficient lighting strategies can reduce the average home’s lighting costs by up to 75 percent. To help you get started, here are seven tips for saving money by making your home lighting more energy efficient.

1. Use more direct task lighting

Task lighting is direct, overhead lighting for desks, kitchen cooking areas, tool benches, craft tables and other areas. In cases like this, you don’t need to light the whole room to accomplish your task. You can just light the area you need illuminated, thereby preventing waste and cutting lighting costs.

2. Install energy-efficient light bulbs

Energy-efficient light bulbs are designed to provide the same amount of light while using less electricity:

 –Compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs) will provide the same quantity of light as incandescent light bulbs while using about 75 percent less electricity. They also last from about 8 to 10 times longer. And don’t forget to check out the special CFLs that are compatible with dimmer switches.

 –High-efficiency halogen lighting is a good option if you don’t like the look of CFLs. You can replace a 100-watt incandescent bulb with a 72-watt or 70-watt halogen bulb or replace a 60-watt incandescent bulb with a 42-watt or 40-watt halogen bulb and still get the same amount of light.

 –Light emitting diode (LEDs) bulbs are the most energy-efficient and long-lasting types of light bulbs. You can replace a 60-watt incandescent bulb with a 12-watt LED that will last more than 20,000 hours, or about 10 years.

3. Shop for lumens, not watts

Remember to shop for light bulbs using lumens, not watts. Lumens describes the amount of light a bulb produces, while watts determines the amount of electricity the bulb uses. Energy-efficient light bulbs will produce the same lumens but use fewer watts (which is how a 12-watt LED, for example, can produce as much light as a 60-watt incandescent bulb).

3. Consider changing the surface color of your room

The way interior surfaces reflect light can be a major player in lighting efficiency. Since lighter colors reflect more light than darker surfaces, you should consider repainting your walls and ceilings with lighter colors and choose lighter colors for your floors and furniture. Conversely, darker colors will absorb more light and require you to use higher wattage bulbs to create the same level of illumination.

4. Use fewer, higher-wattage bulbs

If your home has lamps and light fixtures with multiple sockets for two or more incandescent bulbs, you should consider using fewer, higher-wattage bulbs instead of filling all the sockets with lower-wattage bulbs. Doing so will actually allow you to produce more light. A 100-watt bulb, for instance, produces 50 percent more light than four 25-watt bulbs but uses the same amount of energy. And that’s just for incandescent bulbs. If you use CFLs or LEDs in a similar fashion, your electricity use will be dramatically lower.

5. Locate lamps in corners of rooms

When possible, you should place or install floor, table and hanging lamps in the corners of rooms rather than against a flat wall. Doing so will allow the light from the lamp to reflect off of two wall surfaces instead of one, providing you with greater illumination from the same bulb(s).

6. Clean your lighting fixtures regularly

Make sure to dust and otherwise clean your lighting fixtures regularly. Any dirt or grime that gets on bulbs or reflectors will decrease lighting efficiency.

7. Use multiple circuits for large areas

In the case of large areas that use high levels of lighting some of the time but not all of the time, such as family or living rooms, consider installing fixtures on two or three circuits. That way, you can control the lighting of separate areas of the room (similar to the way that task lighting works, but on a larger scale) without having to light the entire area.

How have you managed to cut you home lighting costs? Let us know what you’ve done and how it’s worked for you.

Sources

Edison Electric Institute, “More Than 100 Ways to Improve Your Electric Bill.”

U.S. Department of Energy, Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy, “Lighting.”