It’s time to upgrade your fluorescent lighting

If you’re still living in the dark ages and suffering with fluorescent bulbs that take five minutes to get up to 100 percent, there’s actually a solution.

Lighting expert Gayle Kassen from Crescent Lighting tells Pete and Rob on this week’s Home Matters that that is the number one complaint when it comes to CFL’s, or compact fluorescent lighting.

Kassen says the lighting industry is working on a fix for that. When you’re at the home store, look for the box with a 2700K, which is your Kelven temperature. That’s what an incandescent light bulb is.

Kassen says a 13W CFL is equal to a 60W incandescent light bulb.

The other big complaint? People want dimmers for their fluorescent lighting, but as Pete said, he had always heard that adding a dimmer for a fluorescent bulb wears out the starter or balast. It heats up and can be a fire hazard.

But Kassen said technology has changed and there are actually dimmable bulbs now.

Kassen said you just have to match the right bulb to your dimmer. She said try a Lutron or Levitan dimmer, which will actually read the bulbs.

Crescent Lighting sponsored this week’s Home Matters.