Buying a light bulb is a little more complicated than it used to be. This is why Simple Bulbs has created a seamless buying process to allow you to purchase simple replacements for Incandescents. Halogens and LED lighting without have to scroll through hundreds of lighting products, or ask for further advice.
Before you purchase your next bulb, you should arm yourself with these tips below to help you select the right bulb shape, base, size and wattage.
.
1. Firstly check your bulb base size and bulb shape
Light bulbs come in a variety of sizes and shapes, depending on where you're using them. The standard light bulb used in households is a GLS A60 E27 or B22. The Edison Screw and the 27 means the base is 27mm across in other countered you may find that this is an E26. The same applies to B22 and 22mm across. Other options are B14 which is a small bayonet cap, as well as an E14 which is a small Edison Screw.
.
You may come across other shapes such as Candles in chandeliers, GU10 or MR16 bulbs in ceiling downlight. Other bulbs available are Golf Balls and ST64 shapes for decorative options.
Once you have identified your shape, you need to make sure that you know whether you want a frosted bulb or filament, we have created two easy options for our customers. We recommend a filament option for exposed bulbs, however if your bulb is within a shade or cannot be seen then frosted is the perfect option.
.
2. Determine how much light you need
Wattage can be a way to determine which bulb will be a direct replacement for the bulb that just burned out in your home, this is why we have supplied the standard wattages in all base types in our products. If you already have LED lighting, it is worth looking at lumens instead of watts to match your replacement. This is the measure of how much light a bulb produces rather than how much energy it uses. You'll usually also see a watt equivalent, but to be sure, look for the lumens. Here's a cheat sheet for replacing incandescent bulbs:
- If you used to buy 100 watt bulbs, look for a bulb with around 1600 lumens.
- If you used to buy 75 watt bulbs, look for a bulb with around 1100 lumens.
- If you used to buy 60 watt bulbs, look for a bulb with around 800 lumens.
- If you used to buy 40 watt bulbs, look for a bulb with around 450 lumens.
On our products we have included the equivalent wattages to Halogens and Incandescents to make the buying process simple.
.
3. Select the right color for your light bulb
White light bulbs have a color temperature scale. They can be the warm white 2000-3000K, this yellow light copying the traditional incandescent light bulb effect, there is cool white 3500K-6000K, this is more of a crisp white or blue light, this can even go as far as daylight 6500k+. Manufacturers like to use terms like "warm" or “cool.” Unfortunately, these terms aren't standard across manufacturers, so we have done this for all of our products and identified the exact colour for the buyers. To determine the direct color replacement, you should look at the color temperature, why not give our other blog post a read to understand how colour temperature and CRI works?
However there are other options available such as Smart lighting, coming soon to Simple Bulbs, this type of lighting allows you to change the spectrum of white, and also produce 16 million other colours and temperatures.
.
4. Do you need a dimmable bulb?
We have made it simple for this question, all of our bulbs we supply are dimmable bulbs, usually these come at a premium cost, but we are able to supply bulbs with all features at the best prices, this means that if you do not yet have a dimmer you can easily fit one in the future or have no worries about dimming if you do have one installed.
.
6. Why choose LED bulbs from Simple Bulbs?
At Simple bulbs we only supply certified light bulbs that are tested to meet energy efficiency standards and will include labelling to tell you exactly what you're buying. The Energy rating and specifications label will show the bulb's brightness (in lumens), colour (i.e. color temperature), lifespan and energy usage. This information makes it easy to compare bulbs, especially if you're considering bulbs of different types.
There are three types of energy-saving bulbs on store shelves.
LEDs are now the most energy efficient product on the market, saving you 75-80% off your energy bills and we recommend you replace all halogen or incandescents with LEDs for this reason.