So, some of you may remember that I have been trying to figure out a lighting solution for using Pearl with my work schedule. She works great in my living room during the day on my days off, but at night it was no good. She would act scared, then when I'd calm her down, she'd just go to bed because it was too dark.
I had originally had 60 watt bulbs in my overhead light fixture. I always thought that they were plenty bright, but after doing some research...more research than I ever thought I'd do on lighting...I found that my living area was actually pretty terribly lit. Like, to the point of being almost too dark for actuallty doing anything.
See, the lights that I had were only putting out like 375 lumens. That's not very much. I had two of them in the light fixture, so that would only be 750 lumens of light when it's dark outside. I have a sliding glass door in this room, so when it's daylight it's very well lit.
I replaced those two lights with some 100 watt bulbs that had 1260 lumens each. So that's a total of 2520 lumens. So I was now running three times the light output that I had before, but Pearl STILL didn't like being in the room at night. She didn't seem to get scared as much, but she'd still just curl up and go to sleep.
What I had been doing to fix this, was brining this into the living room at night when I got her out...
That's a 1000 watt halogen work lamp, and it illuminates the room like there's two suns in the sky. It's pretty insane. Pearl had no issues in the room with this light, even in the middle of the night. The problem?? It's so bright that it makes doing anything ELSE a bit difficult. I have to angle it just right in order to be able to watch TV. I have to angle it just right so it doesn't blind you when you walk into the room. The worst part?? That thing gets HOT. I'm talking several hundred degrees, I would bet. I haven't hit it with my IR temperature gun, but the glass on the front of it seems like it would be hot enough to instantly burn you if it touched you. They get so hot, that after an hour or so of having them on, the living room is noticeably warmer than the rest of the house...like, 4-5 degrees warmer. I've also read that the bulbs on them don't seem to last more than a few hours. So basically, they simply aren't an ideal solution.
I had thought about getting myself a new overhead fluorescent light fixture with four of the 48 inch bulbs in it, but I'm not sure I want to do what I would consider renovations on the house simply to satisfy this little dinosaur at this point in time!!!
My solution??
I went with these...
These are 55 watt GE compact fluorescent light bulbs. They aren't the prettiest things in the world, but in this case the fact that they WORK far overshadows the way that they look.
The 55 watt bulbs put out the equivalent of a 200 watt light bulb...but they only use 55 watts of power, and they're rated to last nearly 7 years. For $12 each, compared to the $6 I paid for the other bulbs, they'll last longer, use half as much energy, and be quite a bit brighter.
How much brighter?? One of these bulbs is 3860 lumens. So, one of them is 153% brighter than BOTH of the other bulbs. Two of them is 7720 lumens, which is over three times the light output of the old bulbs.
As I type this, Pearl is walking around the living room at 2:22 AM, without missing a beat. She hasn't started to be scared at all, and in fact, she's walking to places she hadn't before, because I think that they were too dark for her and she'd turn around before.
The best part?? It's not hard to watch TV now, and it's not getting hotter in this room!!! So, even though they might not look the greatest, they've accomplished everything that I set out to do...which is definitely a win in my book.
Now, the only downside really?? They're bright enough that I can see how much I really need to paint this room!!!! Like, I can see the places where old pictures had been hung, and I can see things that need to be cleaned that I never noticed in my old cave like lighting situation!!!! Oh well, the room was on my list of stuff to paint anyways!!!!
I'm just glad I don't have to drag that giant work light in here anymore.
Just thoguht I'd share with you guys.
