When the bulb costs more than the lamp…

Every one of us at some time in our life bought one of these ‘torchiere’ lamps. Stands on the floor, about the same height as a person. They cost about $20 when I bought mine. They came with a 300W halogen bulb in a tube-style packaged called a ‘T3’ (tubular 3). Most (all?) are 118mm in lenght. Some are 2-level, some are dimmable. And they produce a lot of light. And heat 🙂

Now they are commonly seen on the curb at the end of term in student districts. Poor lamp.

So I’m going to resuscitate mine with one of these.  30W 118mm J-type bulbs. It drives 200 degrees of light (which is roughly what you want from this fixture since it faces up. And the bulb is $30. OMG, its 1/3 more than the lamp cost (somewhere around 1997 when I bought it…).

Its an attractive looking bulb wouldn’t you say? But, its only about 1/2 of the brightness of the original (~2500lumen vs ~5950lumen). But its 10% of the power, so still a win in efficiency.

So, who else is up for the experiment? Rescuscitate that floor lamp, reduce the power draw and waste heat, and liven up their room?

Now, if you want to match the yellow-haze colour (your old one is somewhere around 3200K), you can get ‘warm’ LED. But, I think you should be looking more for ‘daylight’, ~5000-5500K. Its better.