Like many of your favorite products, lightbulbs have labels to let you know exactly what you’re purchasing.
Foods include a nutrition facts label. Packaged meats, for example, have a label detailing the weight and price per pound. You look to this information to determine if one product is better for your needs than another. In the same manner, lighting facts labels are placed on bulb packaging to help you choose which product solution can best light your home.
Although health concerns have encouraged more Americans to understand the words on nutrition facts labels – such as calories, trans fat and carbohydrates – the terms on lighting facts labels are likely less understood. This is not to say that there are few resources on the subject, but people tend to spend less time discussing how to get more lumens in their home than how to reduce the calories in their daily diet.
Here’s an overview of the two types of lighting facts labels and the meaning behind their terms:
A simple label
The Federal Trade Commission of the U.S. Bureau of Consumer Protection mandates that all bulbs with a medium screw base – including incandescent, compact fluorescent and LED bulbs – is sold in a package carrying its label. These labels have been required since Jan. 1, 2012 and appear on the front and back of the packaging. Their purpose is to help consumers better understand what they are buying by imposing a standard method for manufacturers to describe their bulbs’ qualities.
The front label only has two pieces of information: lumens and estimated energy cost per year. Lumens are units of measurement for brightness. Energy costs are denoted in dollars and based on the average initial wattage, a rate of 11 cents per kilowatt and a usage rate of three hours per day.
The back label includes more details. In addition to lumens and energy costs, the rear label denotes the life of the bulb, correlated color temperature, wattage and design voltage. Bulb life is measured in years. Color temperature describes a bulb’s warmness or coolness in regard to the light’s appearance, and wattage is the amount of electricity the bulb uses. Design voltage denotes the target voltage a bulb was designed to achieve.
Products that are Energy Star qualified will also have a label showing this accolade. Additionally, products that contain mercury such as CFL bulbs have the following statement:
“Contains Mercury / For more on clean up and safe disposal, visit epa.gov/cfl.”
A more complex label
The U.S. Department of Energy had a separate lighting facts label that was formally discontinued following Jan. 1, 2012. However, many products that are lighting facts partners still use the label. Unlike the FTC label, the DOE variation was targeted at lighting professionals, as denoted by the additional information that can be found on the label. Yet, this doesn’t mean that you can’t take advantage of the expanded information when shopping for new bulbs for your floor reading lamps.
The DOE label also includes lumens per watt, color rendering index, LED lumen maintenance projection at 25,000 hours at 25 degrees Celsius ambient and whether the bulb has a warranty. Lumens per watt is simply the result of dividing total lumens by the watts. Color rendering index is a scale used to measure how accurately an artificial light source displays color compared to the sun as a reference point. LED lumen maintenance describes how the brightness of an LED bulb at a certain point in its lifespan – in this case 25,000 hours of operation – compares to the initial brightness and appears as a percentage.
Regardless which label you come across, take a few moments to read the details and make certain you’re picking the best bulb for your home.
