When Did It Become So Hard to Buy Light Bulbs?

At some point in recent memory, I realized that I didn’t know how to shop for light bulbs anymore. One day I found myself in the light bulb aisle at a big-box hardware store, completely overwhelmed. There were quite simply too many options, and I didn’t know how to interpret them at all. So I just walked out, bulbless, panicked, frustrated, confused about a task that had once seemed very straightforward.

When a light went out in my apartment in my 20s, I simply walked into the nearest C-Town and bought whatever they had, probably from the bottom shelf. Then I moved to the suburbs, land of the superstore with innumerable options, around the time LED lighting really took off. I was buying more bulbs for a bigger space, and I was picking from a much, much wider selection—and that selection was technologically different than what I grew up with. Despite reading numerous pieces about lighting and the implications of the shift to LED, my home descended into chaos. At one point, either I or my husband accidentally bought very, very cold white bulbs, which resulted in a chaotic system involving Post-it notes on a specific box in the closet that declared "THESE ARE THE GOOD BULBS." And yet we still ended up accidentally installing a bulb in the overhead kitchen light that made the place look like we were about to conduct an alien autopsy on the dinner table. 

Clearly, I needed to reboot my entire understanding of this process, because I didn’t want to eat oatmeal every morning on the set of The X-Files. And so finally, I turned to the experts for help making sense of the new world of LED lighting: two theatrical lighting designers. Turns out you do have to buy bulbs a little bit differently now. 

But first, there’s an important step that comes before you ever start shopping: "I would encourage people to think about the story that they are telling in their personal space," says theatrical lighting designer Cory Pattak, who has worked on Broadway shows including The Great Gatsby.

"Every apartment, every home, every room, it tells a story, whether you even realize it or not," he adds. "People should think about how they want to feel in those rooms and the kind of emotions that they want to be feeling while they’re in those spaces. And then think about lighting that will help support those stories that are being told in those rooms."

LED 101 

The advent of LED technology changed bulbs in ways that made this particular purchasing decision easier to botch.

"When you talk about an incandescent light bulb with a filament, it was the same technology since Thomas Edison’s assistant invented all those years ago, basically," explains lighting designer Jeff Croiter, who has worked on shows on and Off-Broadway including Gutenberg the Musical. That’s the kind many of us grew up with—the ones with the little glowy piece in the middle that you could shake gently to determine whether the filament was still good or if it had burned out, and you had to replace the bulb.

Then came light-emitting diode technology, which is an improvement in several important ways: LED bulbs don’t generate as much heat, they’re more efficient and cheaper to run, and they last significantly longer. (They’re a bit sturdier, as well, because they don’t have that delicate filament and the bulb itself is often made of a stronger material.) They’re consequently better for the environment , and, in any case, incandescent bulbs are rapidly going the way of the dodo, thanks to a 2023 move by the Biden administration that made incandescent bulbs much harder to get. And now everybody has to relearn how to navigate the bulb section at Lowe’s. 

"Why would anybody want anything that isn’t warm white and flattering?"

Watts vs. Lumens

Traditionally, the key factor in buying bulbs was watts: the amount of electrical power it took to run the bulb. (The higher the watts, the brighter the light.) After a century of incandescent bulbs, everybody had a pretty good sense of what various wattages looked like, and so it was hard for me, a clueless twenty-something in her first apartment, to screw it up too badly. I couldn’t go wrong with a standard 40-watt bulb, which worked in any lamp I owned and created plenty of light to see.

Well, the terminology has shifted, because an LED bulb can deliver the same intensity of light using less wattage. Confusing the matter even further, packaging often now includes the term "lumens," which measure light visible to the human eye, or brightness specifically. The good news is, you don’t need to overcomplicate this. "The lumens I wouldn’t worry about so much," advises Croiter. Pattak adds that while they certainly use lumens in theatrical lighting design, he’s never worried about it while shopping for his own home: "The fact is, it’s easy—the higher numbers are brighter and the lower numbers are dimmer." And that works whether the number measures watts or lumens.

For something like a living room lamp, you’re still generally looking for a 40-watt equivalent; manufacturers will generally include a conversion chart or just put the old-school wattage with a little asterisk next to it.

The tricky part is color. That’s where we kept going wrong and landing in Area 51 territory. And for that, you need to look at a different number: Kelvins.

Who’s Kelvin? 

Kelvin is how we measure warmth, which is where LED bulbs can go horribly awry. Incandescent bulbs could be brighter or dimmer, but they all pretty much delivered the same warmth—around 2700K. LED bulbs offer a much wider variety of temperatures, and so many more ways to botch your buying decision.

"I actually have sort of a personal crusade on this, so you’ve come to the right person, because it allows me to get on my soapbox a little bit," says Pattak. Theatrical lighting design is all about using light to further the story, conveying a particular mood. And so nobody understands better the stakes of getting this right: "The wrong color temperature in a specific place or room can completely ruin the dynamic and can actually have really strong effects on you emotionally that you might not even understand."

He uses the example of hotel rooms, which are supposed to a relaxing home away from home, where you can unwind after a long day, and yet all-too-often put cold white bulbs in their bedside lamps, which drives Pattak up the wall: "There is absolutely nothing soothing or comforting right next to your head when you’re trying to go to sleep. It makes you feel like you’re about to get a root canal." In fact, that’s exactly what theatrical lighting designers tend to use to evoke a hospital or a doctor’s office: cold white.

There are, at least theoretically, uses for the higher-Kelvin bulbs. Bright cold light is popular with doctors and dentists because it allows them to see what they’re doing very well. A 5000K "daylight" bulb could be useful for, say, a garage workshop. (Especially if you’ve got poor eyesight.) But it’s not going to feel like a warm, sunny day if you put it inside your house. In fact, when theatrical designers are trying to evoke that feeling, they opt for warmer lights to achieve it, rather than attempting to replicate actual daylight. 

"Why would anybody want anything that isn’t warm white and flattering? I don’t know who buys it—maybe people just buy it by accident," says Croiter. 

Warmer bulbs are going to be as close as you can get to the classic incandescent bulb, too. "Do not just grab any old lightbulb off the shelf," Pattak says. "Take a look at whether it says warm white, daylight, cool light, and always go with that warm white, unless you have a really good reason to not."

After much trial and error, in our house, we landed on a simple Sylvania bulb as our standard household bulb—a soft white, 40 watt equivalent, 2700 kelvin. The packaging helpfully identifies it as "Soft White: inviting, comfortable, friendly." For the troublesome overhead kitchen light, we installed a 60-watt equivalent light of the same warmth, just a bit brighter.

A Note About Smart Bulbs 

If you’re willing to experiment a little, LED technology does open up some new possibilities. Specifically: color-mixable bulbs.

After my bulb-shopping meltdown, at the recommendation of my editor, I acquired a Govee bulb. I’m typically a smart-home skeptic, and this option does require being willing to connect a light bulb to your Wifi and fiddle with your phone for a few minutes. But if you are willing, a smart bulb with all the colors of the rainbow gives you the ability to play around with your lighting until it’s the exact temperature you want. Croiter’s own home is a mix of technologies, including color-mixable bulbs. 

Pattak uses Phillips Hue bulbs—both the color changeable version and tunable white bulbs, which he feels delivers a better quality of white light. The changeability means he can leave his bulbs turned to the warmest possible color but if, for some reason, he ever needed a colder color, it’s an option.

I stuck the Govee bulb in my kid’s poorly lit and chaotic playzone, and not only was it possible to customize a nice, lovely, warm light, we could even activate party mode and sync the lights with music. (Would I say that I recommend doing that? Well, that’s your call.) Of course, when I handed the phone to my child, what color of light did she pick? Cold, alien-autopsy white. Go figure. 

Top image by MirageC via Getty Images

Related Reading:

A Helpful Guide to Living Room Lighting

7 Tips For Reconsidering Your Home Lighting For Healthier Eyes