Easy Home Energy Savings with Efficient Lighting

Lighting offers one of the easiest, most affordable, energy efficiency options. Installing compact fluorescent bulbs are an energy investment that pays for itself quickly, then saves cash on energy bills every month.

Free High Efficiency Lighting Guide

This guideline offers methods to greatly reduce lighting energy use through the application of high quality fluorescent and light emitting diode (LED) technologies.High performance lighting (HPL) strategies may be applied through the range of builder-installed lighting—from the simplest code compliance level to built-in lighting for each room of the house including exterior lighting. The strategies also may be applied in varying degrees of depth—from simply changing lamps (bulbs) in a standard layout, to changing the fixtures in the standard layout as well, or moving to the preferred level of a fresh HPL design for the whole house.

Fully executed, HPL is ambient lighting for the entire house. It provides light levels consistent with the recommendations of the Illuminating Engineering Society (IES), offers good light color and color rendering, controls glare, and is very energy efficient. High performance lighting also covers task lighting in those areas where builders normally install cabinets, appliances, and fixtures—the kitchen and bathrooms. By providing quite full illumination coverage, HPL greatly reduces the need for additional task lighting to perhaps a few reading or desk lamps. It does not cover accent lighting. Thus, HPL offers control of energy use for a large percentage of the total house lighting energy use component. Applying HPL in a whole-house design can result in as much as a 65% lighting energy reduction as compared to the same design executed with incandescent lamps.

For the preferred whole-house lighting design, this guideline offers strategies for three approaches: direct lighting, recessed lighting, or indirect lighting. These offer increasing levels of quality refinement with escalating levels of installed cost. High performance lighting strategies are presented for eight representative residential room types plus exterior lighting. These cover virtually all of the typically used rooms in a house plus its exterior. High performance lighting can provide an excellent quality of residential illumination.