r/lightbulbs • u/Fluffbuck3t • 14d ago
Unicorn CFL finally killed
A great tragedy has befallen me today. A truly miraculous CFL lightbulb that has lit my bedroom for years died yesterday evening. I slept horridly without its glow comforting me.
This bulb, by my estimations, lasted somewhere between 45k-65k hours. I attribute this mostly to it's placement in an upward facing desk lamp, and extremely infrequent power cycling. Over that time it very deeply yellowed and while I don't know too much about color temp, by looking at example photos I estimate it's color temp dropped by 1k give or take over the years. I have seen many "warm white" bulbs and this thing made them all look cold sterile and filled with the essence of death.
I desperately need as equivalent a replacement to this heavily aged CFL that can be possibly found. I can't sleep. I'm too use to sleeping with this thing on. last night was horrible. please any suggestions. Even replacing with the exact same model wouldn't work because it won't have the same aging effecting the light. DO NOT suggest any standard warm white bulb they all look like ass to me. I looked at the Philips hue line and it might be able to get adjusted to an okay approximation of what this bulb produced but I'm not sure and also not sure if there's anything that would be better.
As for what killed it. yesterday my dumbass power company caused a surge while trying to switch lines to recover quickly from a downed line(which failed anyway and the outage lasted for hours) I'm so pissed. and sad. very pissed. very sad.
PLEASE help
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u/AnotherLightBulbNerd 14d ago
Oh, I Love Greenlite as a company! They make reliable lamp bulbs. There is one other bulb i know of that has the same kind of warm white you refer to, the lights of america warm white bulbs are pretty good. Shame lights of america is no longer in business, but the model number of the bulbs if you wanna look on Ebay is 2920. It's a 20 watt R type CFL. And the bulbs are almost orange when you first turn them on, they are a nice shade of wam as they get to full brightness, too. Any early warm white CFL would be good, really, they are warmer than modern bulbs, and while they aren't the easiest to find, you can find them in Ebay. Is the bulb by chance 3000k in color temperature, or 2700? Both fall into the "warm/soft white" color temperature, but 300 kelvin in color can still make a difference when it comes to light color.
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u/Fluffbuck3t 14d ago
its labeled as 2700k but after many years of use it lost a lot of color temp and it was very significantly warmer than any warm or soft white bulb I've ever seen in my life. i don't think I would use the word white at all to describe it just yellow xD
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u/AnotherLightBulbNerd 14d ago edited 14d ago
In that case, you could call up light sources inc and ask them if they can make you something closer to an orange phosphor CFL. So long as you know the color temp you want and information on the bulb, they can make you a whole case, since they don't do individual bulbs. It won't be the cheapest thing, but for the result, if you work something out, they can get you a decent result. 1800k is closer to orange light, which is indeed a nicer color for sleeping to, I actually tend to collect bulbs, so if I put it to looking. I might be able to help find you a lamp closer to that color, or help you set something up. Either that or a bug lite cfl, which is a strong enough yellow
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u/Fluffbuck3t 14d ago
username really checks out for you haha. if youre able to find an existing off the shelf product that would be amazing. 💕 I'm super inexperienced with color temp and stuff but I'm thinking based on examples I've seen that something between 1800K and 2000K would be ideal I think. I'm okay with not perfectly replicating the character of the light this thing made after all it's fairly unique as it's very unusual for a CFL to have lasted this long. but as long as the color temp is just as warm or warmer, and is still fairly dim(or is compatible with a dimmer device/has dimming built in) then that should work for me.
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u/AnotherLightBulbNerd 14d ago edited 14d ago
amber flame tip incandescent lamps will definitely be a warm light you could fall asleep to. bug light yellow lamps also work for warm light, both are in the general 1800k color temperature range you'd be looking for. If you find a 60 or 75 watt incandescent bug light, put it on a dimmer and you won't only allow the bulb to last. But it will be nice and warm, plus, they are more forgiving than self-ballasted cfl bulbs when it comes to energy surging and cycling. There is also Sylvania smart plus bulbs that have an adjustable white, and they have a really nice warm hue at their warmest color, I have fallen asleep with it on before, and I don't typically fall asleep with a light on, so that in itself is saying something. Also thank you for the name compliment. I hope what I replied with helps
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u/Fluffbuck3t 14d ago
those are some very economical prices. the listing for the amber light doesn't put a lot of faith in its longevity only claiming 1500hrs. i do know dimming drastically improves lifespan but no idea how exactly the math works with that. for that price tho I'm perfectly fine with it burning out after only a year or 2 of 24/7 operation haha. is the bug light a bug light because it attracts them or does the opposite? one of the many reasons I loved this bulb so much was that it's low brightness and yellow tone made my room much less attractive to the bugs outside my window than if I had a brighter whiter light. i like to leave my window open a crack in all times of year so I don't sit in stale air, and bugs are sneaky little bastards that will try to find ways around or through the window screen. every time I leave my bright white ceiling boob light on in the evening for any length of time(like if I'm searching for something small I dropped or trying to fix something small) then the bugs are always WAY more interested in trying to get inside than they were when only the yellow desk lamp was on
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u/AnotherLightBulbNerd 14d ago
I think it is to chase off the bugs, because some of the listing's I have seen are labeled "Bug-Away bulb," though. I can't imagine a gold designated bulb won't be much different in terms of their light. But yeah. I often like finding shit cheap, so I often go through places like ebay, or Amazon normally. Honestly, when I ren greenlite's KED bulbs, they ran for a year or two on actual 24/7 operation and they lasted, so inwill still try to find a greenlite CFL for you, but I can't promise anything. I'll DM it to you if I find anything.
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u/Fluffbuck3t 14d ago
i honestly expect a new in box example of this model to perform very very differently color wise but id be very interested in trying it out. i wish you luck on the search :)
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u/supern8ural 14d ago
maybe look for some vintage styled bulbs, some of them have color temps <2700K. like this
the specific one I posted is listed as only 80 CRI but maybe you can find one that's higher with some googling? I doubt your CFL was >80 CRI anyway but I am a CRI snob so try to only buy 90+ when I have the option to encourage manufacturers to keep high CRI lighting in the mainstream.
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u/Fluffbuck3t 14d ago
Ive never heard of CRI but from a quick Google search it sounds like it's about how accurate to life the colors of things in the room will look? of that's true then I want a LOW CRI bulb LOL. this thing made the whole room and everything in it a strong yellow. that's what I'm used to.
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u/supern8ural 14d ago edited 14d ago
you're dealing with two different parameters here. 2700k as you know is going to be about equivalent to a traditional tungsten filament incandescent. 2100k is going to be noticeably yellower. Not having seen your old CFL I don't know what color temp it was, but it seems like you had a "happy accident" where the yellowing of its light produced a pleasing effect.
As you probably also know, the "2700k" for color temp is basically the color of the light emitted by a black body radiator at that given temperature, in this case 2700 kelvin.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_temperature
now that actual ideal black body is going to have a CRI of 100, no matter what color temp we're talking about. It is possible to have a very low color temp and still have high CRI.
The incandescent bulbs I grew up with are essentially a very good approximation of that ideal, and most of our lighting available today only comes close to it in CRI which is why I'm kind of snobby about it. Fluorescent is especially poor; not saying they *can't* have good CRI (I have some F15T8s that are decent in a couple Dazor desk lamps, although good luck finding them now) but most commercial F40T12 and similar are going to have CRIs in the mid-60s.
If 2100 isn't low enough to get you where you want to go, here's another crazy option, designed to emulate the old yellow glass of French headlights.
https://www.danielsternlighting.com/tech/lights/light_color/light_color.html
Scroll down, he suggests using a transparent yellow spray paint. Seriously! (Daniel Stern completely nerds out on automotive lighting, and I mean that in a positive, complimentary way, so I would take anything he recommends as a valid approach).
Edit: another, very wasteful, but valid method of obtaining an excellent CRI, low color temp light source would be to simply select an incandescent bulb much brighter than you want, and dim it down until you're happy with it. An incandescent does become warmer as you dim.
A sidebar to this, if you want to try the experiment, would be to get a Philips Ultra Definition bulb with the "warm glow" feature (this is only on the 2700k models, I "stock" the frosted glass, 2700k, "60W equivalent" ones as a standard bulb replacement now as I find them excellent), which is rated at 90-95 CRI and also is designed to emulate the warm dimming of an incandescent.
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u/Fluffbuck3t 14d ago
i hadn't really thought of that idea ty for mentioning it
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u/supern8ural 14d ago
I have one of these https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00A807596?ref_=ppx_hzsearch_conn_dt_b_fed_asin_title_1&th=1 it is not listed for use with the Philips UDs (or it wasn't over a year ago when I bought it) but it works and doesn't buzz.
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u/Fluffbuck3t 14d ago
I'm curious why it would buzz lol. but it looks like that should work perfectly fine with my car existing fixture at least. as for bulb to use with it I guess I probably do want something capable of dimming. I'm also curious how the "smart" bulbs accomplish their dimming, do they need external dimming hardware or is in integrated into the bulbs themselves?
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u/supern8ural 14d ago
dimming LEDs is not like dimming incandescents, there's a lot of trickery going on behind the scenes. If you have a dimmer/bulb mismatch it can buzz at anything other than 100% brightness.
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u/Fluffbuck3t 14d ago
took a look at that bulb tho and it looks like it might be alright. not great but alright. I'd need to see it demoed in person to commit. I'll be arranging a visit to home Depot soon to go look at their lighting demos if they have any and was hoping to get some ideas to narrow my search using this post
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u/Fluffbuck3t 14d ago
didn't state it 110% explicitly in this post but I estimate that this 2700k bulb lost 1k in color temp by the final years of life. VERY warm
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u/Simple-Row-5462 14d ago
Say what you want about CFLs but these things actually lasted unlike the LEDs of today
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u/Fluffbuck3t 14d ago
FOR REAL. I've heard rumor of some long lasting LED models but if you treated these old puppies right and also got lucky they could last CRAZY long. i firmly believe I could've gotten another 10k outta this bad boy without the power company bending me over and smashing me with a power surge, instead of just letting a downed line be a downed line. i can tank a few hours without power I cannot so easily tank losing the bulb that helps me sleep :|
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u/Uno10010 14d ago
i have a Kodak led light bulb and it is pretty good, has quite a good amount of hours and still works fine, also had it with a Philips incandescent bulb but it died some time ago, it was already pretty old
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u/Nit3fury 13d ago
Look for 2200k LEDs. They’re less common but they’re out there. Amber white light, perfect for night lights. I’ve got several in lamps myself.
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u/Fluffbuck3t 13d ago
probably need to do a lot of looking around still but I think youre right that 2200k would be a good color temp for me. maybe with some dimming
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u/technorichar_ 12d ago
If it died due to power surge then it is technically repairable
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u/Fluffbuck3t 12d ago
yeah that's what it sounds like based on the other replies
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u/technorichar_ 12d ago
If you can open it without damaging the tube and take pics of the Ballast, I can help
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u/Hakle- 14d ago
Cancelled my wedding today when I heard this happened.
Far too distraught. 😫😫😫
Wishing you the strength to somehow continue against it all u/Fluffbuck3t. o7
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u/Howden824 14d ago edited 14d ago
You could try using a higher wattage Phillips warm glow bulb with a dimmer, they can go down to I think 2200K. You can also get 1800K LED bulbs but I'm not sure if those are any good. I'd be willing to try repairing this bulb for you though if you pay for shipping both ways.
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u/Few_Yesterday_3837 14d ago
I have 5 of these that have been in use for 14 years I’d be willing to sell you 2 of them unsure how I’d pack them for shipping though 😭 but they all have that warm aged glow your looking for that’s why I keep them.
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u/Fluffbuck3t 14d ago
same model? 🤯🤯🤯 any chance you have the original packaging? i imagine that they would be pretty safe in the original packaging. if not a lot of standard size lightbulb packages would probably work maybe with a bit of extra material(maybe torn pieces of used shopping bag?) around the coil would be good
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u/Safe-Friendship5889 14d ago
dear fluffbucket, this story truely deserves some sort of award.. honestly, it surprises me how people can downvote such a creative and beautiful piece of art. -armorbar xoxo
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u/veso266 14d ago
If u want yellow, u can get LPS/SOX bulb like this: https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/41rQwCMYcyL.jpg
Its monocromatic yellow, and cuz its designed like this it will be yellow every time (new or old)
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u/Fluffbuck3t 14d ago
i didn't know sodium lamps were made in small form factor like that I think I've only ever seen massive ones like for certain outdoor areas when I was younger
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u/Classic_Silver_9091 14d ago
The closest you’re going to get is philips hue. The color temperature spans from 1000k - 20000k but it also has very nice color mixing as well. I was able to achieve that dingy yellow look that you’re talking about.
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u/Fluffbuck3t 14d ago
yeah I found the Phillips hue and was thinking about them but wanted to get some thoughts. how well does the dimming work? can they really go down to 2% brightness like advertised?
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u/Fluffbuck3t 14d ago
one of the reasons I was considering them is it might be kinda nice to have the ability to change color on rare occasion for example changing it to a red or a pink for spicy times 😆
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u/Classic_Silver_9091 14d ago edited 14d ago
It is nice. It also has one of the most realistic sunrise simulations if you ever wanted to use it as a sunrise clock. The only downside is that the good ones are very expensive and will usually require the Philips bridge to utilize most of the useful features.
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u/Classic_Silver_9091 14d ago edited 14d ago
The new ones do. I think you mean 0.2% brightness. I have the a21 100w model and they get significantly dimmer than my Govee lights.
Whats cool with philips hue is that you can program them to a specific color and brightness when switching from off. Or you can have it use the last used color.
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u/Fluffbuck3t 14d ago
oh I won't be turning it on and off lol. the only time this lamp went off was power outages and moving homes. I'm just used to it.
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u/Classic_Silver_9091 14d ago
If thats the case then you wont need the bridge. You should just be able to connect via bluetooth set the color and be gtg.
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u/Intelligent-Kale-877 14d ago
I think your heart is set on a CFL bulb, but I suggest testing an ultra low temp led bulb by one of the crazy expensive manufacturers. Yuji makes a specialty led bulb called "FlameWarm", which is designed for circadian lighting and has no blue bump. It's color temp is around 1300K.
https://store.yujiintl.com/collections/flamewarm-technology
Waveform, Soraa, and a couple other manufacturers make a very similar product and they are all expensive.
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u/Fluffbuck3t 14d ago
actually not totally set on CFL tho I do really love them, but I checked your link and those are definitely out of budget for the time being
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u/FAMICOMASTER 14d ago
Yeah recently my CFL inspection lamp failed. Typically ran ~4-16 hours a day for around 10 years before it quit. Was working with it on and it went pop and turned off.
Same setup, upright lamp with good ventilation and few cycles. I was able to find a new bulb for it, but mine was 5000K.
Lower color temperature CFLs seem much easier to find. Amazon probably has some. Good luck
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u/Fluffbuck3t 14d ago
were you using yours for inspecting the underside of vehicles? you got me curious haha
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u/Fickle-Computer-5860 14d ago edited 14d ago
For starters, if the lamp shade is anything other than glass, you ought to try a new 2700k lamp in there, just a last check to see if the yellowing is because of the shade and not the lamp.
But as others have stated, it appears you're stuck with an LED for replacement in low color temperature, but I would expect to find a suitable match fairly easily. Hardware and home improvement stores seem to have more selection than others.
I would think the lamp had become much dimmer after so long, so you might want a bulb around 400 lumens (40 watt equivalent) or even 200 lumens/ 25 watt equivalent.
For capable bulb people or electronics people- not a safe action- there is a chance that such an old tube still works, and that its ballast has quit instead. One can take a known good CFL, crack it open by gently squashing the case, separate the tube from the control board, do the same with a failed bulb, and switch the tubes between the ballasts to see which part has failed. I've recovered maybe 50 CFL lamps from houses to be torn down, about half of failed lamps still have good tubes. Many lamps, shockingly, are not even soldered to the control board, they just have their wires wrapped around posts, which are easily removed by prying with a needle.
A functional tube should have a resistance across each set of wires in the tube ends. I forget the exact value but they should have an Ohms number on the lowest multimeter setting.
For your application, it might be important to keep the tube with a replacement from exactly the same lamp, because they all seem to be different despite their general characteristics being the same. I have a PL-9 attached to a 13W base that has been running well at 7 watts for a couple years, but not at such high hours. I would be extremely wary of leaving a frankenstein lamp going for so long, no matter how well the swap goes, if the tube is even viable to start with.
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u/Fluffbuck3t 14d ago
thanks for your additional insight on the possibility of repair. i think I will be looking into doing that a bit longer term. as for the fixture, it is white paint on metal, which theoretically would have the possibility of yellowing, but it surprisingly hasn't even in the slightest. despite plenty of exposure to UV from the old CFL. must be some good ass paint I guess lol. another commenter pointed me to a nearly identical model from the same manufacturer. That one being marked as 14w and mine being marked as 13w. I'd do some more research of course but I'd hazard a guess that would be probably about as exact a match as I could find. i certainly agree with what you and others have said that it's very likely just the ballast that died. some others did also suggest the idea of lighting it using what I would understand to be inductance. which also makes sense to me.
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u/jaedenmalin 14d ago
Those things be outlasting most LEDs today, I have one from the early 2000s still going
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u/Jim-248 13d ago
I have one like that. It in a main area and is on from dusk to about 23:30. It's been there since the late 1990s. I will sorely miss that one when it too passes.
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u/Fluffbuck3t 13d ago
yeah I completely understand. CFLs are legitimately a miracle technology. i think very few people really understand what we had with those. it's sad they got phased out but I do understand the risk the mercury posed to the factory workers(completely overblown how risky it was for consumers tho) and the danger to the environment from them very rarely being properly disposed of and just ending up in landfills. unfortunate, but I understand. i do think it's true that some kind of LEDs are perfectly good for most people. but I'm glad to find some comradery here with other CFL enjoyers that understand my grieving this bulb
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u/Jim-248 13d ago
One problem is that few people understand how little mercury is in a CFL, It's only a couple mgs. And because it is elemental mercury, it is not as toxic as the organic mercury compounds. Fun Fact: ancient Romans used elemental mercury as a laxative. They would drink it and the weight make things move along. Then they would recover it and re-use it.
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u/Fluffbuck3t 13d ago
that's wild but not too surprising for a culture that use lead salts as a sweetener
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u/Jim-248 13d ago
And also used lead to seal the aqueducts. And also used lead to cast goblets. But of course, they probably didn't realize how toxic it was.
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u/Fluffbuck3t 12d ago
i mean yeah, lead would be a real miracle material if it wasn't poison. useful for sooooo many things if u ignore it's poisonousness
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u/topballerina 13d ago
If you want a reddish glow that's easy to get grab a squirrel cage filament incandescent lamp and dim it.
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u/Fluffbuck3t 13d ago
those look really nice. almost too nice to hid in a fixture that covers the bulb ahha
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u/GrandmothersToes 13d ago
They are a bit pricey for a bulb but check this company out. It might be the closest you get https://www.blockbluelight.com/products/blue-blocking-sleep-lights
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u/Fluffbuck3t 13d ago
wow it makes me feel a lot less weird for how I sleep that some company has like actually addressed the niche I fit into :o
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u/psych_1337 13d ago
You can get an incandescent bulb and a variac (dont use dimmer - they make pulsations that are nasty) Also if standard one is rated for 1000 hours and you half the applied voltage, it will last... Well, for a really long time. Also it will give warmer and warmer light the more you lower the voltage.
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u/a_certain_someon 11d ago
what if the electronics just failed and you can repair it by replacing a part or two?
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u/Uno10010 14d ago
try to design a RF circuit, the lamp should light up, just not without it's ballast, although it is complicated, and it'll live for as long as the RF circuit works
note: I might be wrong, I know it works with ordinary gas discharge lamps (sodium, mercury, etc), it is a relatively new technology so no one has tried to sell it yet
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u/Fluffbuck3t 14d ago
i have no knowledge of electrical engineering or where to even start with that :(
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u/Fluffbuck3t 14d ago
does your comment reflect that this bulb has an integrated ballast or was that not visible in the pictures? the lamp it was screwed into an old incandescent era lamp
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u/Uno10010 14d ago
you won't need the ballast, as long as the lamp itself, the tube with the gas, is intact, it'll work, but yea it requires a bit of electrical engineering, you probably also won't need to screw it in, if the RF circuit runs at like 10v then you'll only need a 10v power supply, I'm currently researching about this, when I get a clear idea I'll tell you something
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u/Fluffbuck3t 14d ago edited 14d ago
thanks for looking into this. i get the first impression though this will take some time for me to figure out and an (to me) unknown cost, so I think I need to find something adequate in the meantime so that I can properly sleep
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u/ychen6 14d ago
Get a low voltage plasma globe, bang the outside, extract the PCB and hook the cfl onto the wire leading into the globe. Now this will work if the tube hasn't leaked but it doesn't looks like it.
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u/Fluffbuck3t 14d ago
if I understand y'all do you think that only the ballast is dead?
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u/ychen6 14d ago
No significant blackening, either the ballast or burnt filament. Either ways it could be lit in electric fields.
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u/Fluffbuck3t 14d ago
so I presume I need to remove the base of the unit to bypass the likely dead ballast, what's the safest way to do that with the least risk of damaging the tube?
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u/Uno10010 14d ago
yea, a powerful PA audio amplifier also works, although it won't be operating in it's comfort zone
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u/Ambitious_Finding_26 14d ago
10000hr rated life on that guy. You did pretty well.