OK I suppose this might be what is classed as a first world problem but it had me in full rant mode recently.
We have redecorated and, as a knock on from this, we decided some new light shades were in order. We went to John Lewis where we found one or two we thought we could live with but then DH noticed that on each one there is a maximum power of light bulb that it is safe with. Of course we then realised there is no easy way of doing the comparisons on light bulbs because there are all the different sorts of energy saving ones and they all seem to express their power in different ways depending on whether they are CFL or halogen or whatever. Nor do the lamp shade manufacturers seem to be consistent in which sort of bulb they use to give their recommendations.
Eventually we found a chart purporting to show how they all compared but it was still a bit sketchy. Basically what we needed to know was what sort of energy saving bulb gives us the equivalent to the old-fashioned incandescent 100w and then which shades will take a bulb like that.
Well we eventually managed to establish the first piece of information but to our utter frustration it seemed that none of the lamp shades, in John Lewis at least, would take anything like that sort of bulb.
A young chap who worked there came to see if he could help, spent five minutes giving me the spiel on how good enery saving lights were but was unable to answer why all the lamp shades available would apparently combust if you put anything more powerful than a glow worm in them and why would I want to spend all that money on a lamp shade if I am then virtually stumbling around in the dark because of the bulb I need to use.
Finally we ended up in Homebase where we managed to buy a couple of glass lamp shades that will apparently take a bulb almost as powerful as we want - we are only exceeding the recommended wattage by about 10%.
So OK I get the arguments for energy saving (though I am deeply sceptical that the bulbs will last as long as they claim as I am sure I have had one blow after less than 2 years) but
a) why can't the comparison information be expressed in a way that is more consistent?
b) why don't the people making lamp shades make them a bit more robust?
Rant over
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To have a rant about light bulb and lamp shade manufacturers
37 replies
5Foot5 · 23/10/2013 12:14
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