As we attempt to make our homes more environmentally friendly, the government is telling us that we should take out our incandescent light bulbs and instead use compact fluorescent bulbs. However, I have a number of objections to these bulbs. First, they seem a lot dimmer than the incandescents. When I replaced old bulbs with new ones that were labeled to have the equivalent wattage, I was dissatisfied; the new bulbs did not brighten the room as well. I like a lot of lights in my rooms. My second complaint is that I have some small lamps in my bedrooms. You know what I am talking about; the lamp shade has two wire loops that slip down over the light bulb. I cannot quite get the lamp shade to fit correctly over the swirly compact fluorescents. Third, last winter the bulb in my porch light burned out. Naturally, I put in a compact fluorescent. When the weather turned cold, the bulb shone very dimly until it heated up enough to glow more brightly. By the end of the winter, the bulb did not work anymore. It did not have the long life that we are promised for their higher costs. Finally, my last complaint is much more serious. These bulbs contain a small amount of mercury. If one should accidentally be broken, it will release mercury into your home environment-not a good thing at all. And when one does burn out (like my porch light), we are told not to discard them in the trash but to dispose of them properly. Do not despair. A better solution is on the horizon. This solution is LED low voltage lighting and other low voltage lighting solutions that are being developed.

When LED lighting comes into common use the light bulbs will look even stranger than the coiled tubes of the compact fluorescents. LED bulbs are very small but very bright for their size. You have probably seen a flashlight with an LED bulb. It gives off a slightly bluish glow that does an excellent job of lighting your path or tabletop. When used in other applications, they are either clustered together or lined up in a string. Decorators are now beginning to incorporate them into the decor of houses in a number of ways. One popular use is as recessed lighting in a ceiling. This type of lighting arrangement uses the bulbs that consist of a cluster of LEDs. When these are recessed into the ceiling of a room, they illuminate the room with a warm glow and no harsh glare. The color of this light is very similar to that of the incandescent bulbs. Another currently popular lighting arrangement these days is the rope lights that illuminate areas such as under or on top of the cabinets in the kitchen. This is more of a mood lighting arrangement.

With this fast-paced growth of low energy lighting, the government needs to be cautious and take its time to decide what type of lighting they want to mandate and to not force compact fluorescents as the only option.