The warm glow of incandescent lights on your porch or driveway is cheery, but it can boost your lighting bill, especially if they’re left on overnight—or even all day (gasp!). Instead,
compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs) can get ’er done with less energy, and if turned off when not needed, they can save you even more. (Most CFLs don’t work well with motion sensors or timers, though, so expect shorter lamp life if you attempt such things. Daredevil.)
CFLs last longest when they’re on for over an hour, which handily is often the case for porch lights. The products that have the
warmest color (simulating incandescent lamps) often cost more than the cooler (bluer or whiter) labeled lamps, but the cool lamps work great for helping you find your keys, or illuminating the neighborhood hooligans on Halloween.
Think CFLs are old news?
Check out cold cathode CFLs, or CCCFLs. These former Vegas stars had a colorful, low-wattage past (they were used in flashing casino signs), but technology has birthed some white lights at higher wattages (8 to 15 watts). They aren’t as bright or quite as efficient as standard Energy Star CFLs, but they can take frequent switching and
live about twice as long as CFLs—up to 20,000 hours. They cost a little more than CFLs, and you may need to special-order these puppies through a local lighting retailer or look online.
What about the mercury in CFLs, you ask? "If a CFL breaks," says
Seattle City Light, "your greatest risk is getting cut from glass shards, and not from the very small amount of mercury." In comparison, old thermometers had 100 times as much mercury as CFLs do, says the
National Institute of Environmental Health Science. Here's
how to dispose of CFLs properly. As with all breakables, be careful and keep them away from the kiddos. (If you have a lighting fixture that suffers from frequent contact, that wouldn’t be a good application for a CFL.)