I started buying Home Depot’s store brand several years ago. Much to my surprise (given their low price), they were reliable (even with intermittant use) and had outstanding color rendition (good enough for flashless snapshots). They also come on “instantly” (faster than an incandescent!), though not at full brightness (though much brighter than the Philips).

Consumer Reports recently concurred, ranking them near the top.

I haven’t checked them for dimming capability, but will eventually get around to it.

Your frustrations are shared by many! And so is your outcome — a few CFLs in some parts of the house, but not many where they really count, right?

Our kitchen has some floodlights built in, and a couple halogen lamps over the stove. None is a CFL — we tried, but the ceiling lights are dimmable, and that just didn’t work, and there are very few choices in the specific size that our fixtures require — PAR 20. Similarly, our dining room has a chandelier with 5 lamps (candle style, exposed) and dimmable — they just don’t have anything comparable in CFL. Our living room has R-30 ceiling lights, again, dimmable (although I have some hope that we’ll find a reasonable solution for this). So, we’re far from 100%.

But, we do think a little more when we turn the incandescent lights on. And we make sure to turn them off when not needed.

In truth, turning lights off is probably what accounts for the majority of our electricity savings over the years. Still, there are CFLs that are just as nice and workable as the incandescent bulbs they replace … or are in locations where we can make an easy trade-off.

Our basement, outdoor flood light, the lights in the garage, attic, and others all fall into the “trade off” category. Then, there are standing lamps, reading lights, and desk lamps that are all perfectly good replacements for standard light bulbs. No, really, they are just as good as the bulbs they replace.

So, as I test, I am going to focus on the ones that work in either the “don’t care, just need light”, and the “works as well or better than the incandescent it replaces”.

And, I’ll provide specific brands, models, and resellers that you can buy them from … since it may be that getting low quality bulbs is as much a problem and frustration (and expense!) as some of the other real problems that CFL’s just can’t solve yet.

Tom

It would be great if you could add specific functionality to your experiment though. Some CFLs might be great quality lights in general, but not work at all for someone who wants a bulbs for a reading lamp. Likewise, some bulbs may not give off the best quality light indoors, but work great and last for years in a porch light (which would be especially good for the elderly and people who would have trouble changing a bulb in a less-accessible fixture). Perhaps your list could pull out some of your tested bulbs and specify their strengths and weaknesses. I know I get frustrated very quickly if I spend a bunch of money on a CFL and it doesn’t do what I need it to. Most people can’t/won’t test brands and types of bulbs in different lamps until they find the optimum arrangement.

We went through our share of crappy CFLs as well. I had an interesting conversation last week with a guy from a prominent online reseller of lighting, confirming that probably the majority of what people can buy, in stores and online is cheap, and “brand” is often meaningless. That’s not always the case, though.

I have also managed to make contact with a person at GE and I hope she’ll be able to send me a few “sure bet” samples.

But it does look like there’s some hope, and my goal is to find a few CFLs that are well made, readily available, and don’t have the many problems you have listed. The premature failure issue is big (and hard to really know about just by looking).

The CFL industry really seems to be shooting themselves in the foot on this issue.

We have the misfortune of being an early adopter of CFLs in our household, and have suffered through the combination of high prices due to scarcity, and high failure rates across many different makes and brands.

CFLs are a lot easier to get now than a few years ago, but the premature failure rates are still surprisingly high, and don’t seem to be closely related to selling price. The extra cheap bulbs do seem to have “infant mortality” issues more than the others, but what bothers me are the ones that fail after a few months of use, especially when they cost several dollars each because they’re supposed to be better quality. The “longer lifetime” used to justify the higher initial cost is generally non-existent, in my experience. They are very effective at cutting energy use though.