How about LED house lights? LED light bulbs are more efficient than incandescent or fluorescent lighting. The problem is that LEDs have very directed light. For LED Christmas lights, that isn’t a problem; you just want some shining points of light, which LEDs do very efficiently. Lumens levels are read from a sensor placed right underneath the light source. A household LED light bulb at 2 watts may have the same lumens rating as a 50 watt halogen bulb, or as a 15 watt CFL, but the LED lamp may only send a focused light directly under it to the photo sensor, while the incandescent light and CFL will light up a much broader area, and still give that same lumens rating for the area immediately beneath the bulb. When it comes to halogen lights, they are only as efficient as incandescent lights, so the same efficiency considerations apply here. But since halogen lights are typically much more direct than incandescent bulbs, LED lights that are designed to replace halogen lights are both more efficient than the halogens they replace, and work well for the direct light that halogen bulbs provide. This increases the area of full light coverage of an LED light. Where LED lights outshine existing bulbs is as replacements for lighting that is (or should be) highly directed. Task lighting is another example of an application where LEDs shine. LED light bulbs are, in theory at least, very durable, when compared to incandescent bulbs and compact fluorescent bulbs. LED lights do decline progressively in light intensity and therefore in efficiency, although they will still be more efficient than either CFLs or incandescent bulbs throughout their life.

The “color temperature” of a light bulb, measured in ‘degrees Kelvin’, determines human visual response to its light. Be a trend-setter, not a trend-follower – start converting your home lighting to true daylight colors, whether with CFL lights or LED light bulbs.