How To Incorporate Sustainable Lighting In Your Home


For many people, reducing their energy consumption has two important benefits – it helps the environment and it saves money on those costly utility bills. In the average home, lighting costs around 15% of the annual bill and this increases to around one quarter for commercial properties. So,any way to reduce that bill has tobe a big plus, yet simply turning out the lights isn’t always an option, especially in the dark days of winter. Enter sustainable lighting and a range of different ways to light your home for less.

Energy Efficient Lighting

Most of us use the traditional style of lightbulb, known as an incandescent bulb. These use electricity passing through a tungsten metal filament that heats to over 2000 degrees and gives off light by glowing. They are also hugely inefficient – only 10% of power used goes to lighting and the other 90% is wasted. Halogen lights came along as an alternative and while they are better, they are still inefficient although they last around double the time of an incandescent bulb.

The creation of energy efficient light bulbs has changed all of that and these are fast becoming the standard option for homes. There are two main types – compact fluorescent lights (CFL) and light emittingdiodes (LED).

CFL Versus LED

So what are the differences and which are best for the home? CFLs are a glass tube that is coated with phosphor and filled with gas and a little mercury. Electricity jumps between electrodes at either end of the tube, excites the mercury, whichcauses the ultraviolet light. This hits the phosphor and creates visible light. They create the same amount of light as incandescent bulbs but are 80% cooler and four times more efficient. The main problems with them are that they are more expensive to buy and care needs to be taken that they don’t break and are disposed of safely due to the toxic chemicals within.

Currently, LEDs are winning as the favourite choice for homeowners. These are small, solid bulbs that create light by passing electrons through a solid semi-conductor material – hence the alternative name of solid-state lighting. Because there are no gases or filaments involved, they are very energy efficient and last around 100 times longer than incandescent bulbs plus around 10 times longer than CFLs. There are also no chemicals involved and they work well with solar power systems but are the most expensive type of bulb to buy.

Other Ways To Increase Energy Efficiency

Light bulbs alone aren’t the only way to improve energy efficiency while lighting a home. For example, the best form of lighting is natural sunlight and many homes are now being built with daylighting design in mind. This means strategic placement of windows, skylights and even translucent panels to make the most of the natural sunlight.

Sunlight transportation systems are the ultimate in sunlight collection devices. Trapped on roofs, the light is then transported along fibre-optic cables for up to 15 metres and then used to power artificial lighting systems in homes. While not commonly used yet, they are definitely one for the future.

Stuart Cooke is the Marketing Manager at SpecifiedBy, an online platform for specifiers, architects and construction professionals.

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