PAR, BR, and MR bulbs<\/a>.<\/p>\r\nSummary: PARs and MRs are narrow-beam spotlights; BRs (\u201cbulged reflector\u201d) are wider-beam floodlights.<\/p>\r\n
And numbers like BR20, BR30, and BR40 indicate the diameter of the bulb at the wide end (measured in eighths of an inch).<\/p>\r\n
Another area that had always confused me is color temperatures. \u201cDaylight\u201d sounds like a good color for a lightbulb! But \u201cwarm\u201d also sounds like a good color for a lightbulb! But \u201cdaylight\u201d is a different color than \u201cwarm\u201d! And the colors are all measured in numbers! Confusing!<\/p>\r\n
The abovelinked page explains: \u201cWarm or soft white (2700K\u20133000K) is typically more suitable for home use in the family and bedrooms. Daylight (5000\u20136500K) is more often used to light kitchen areas.\u201d<\/p>\r\n
And finally, there\u2019s the question of whether you can use a brighter LED bulb in place of a less-bright incandescent bulb. A \u201c65W equivalent\u201d LED bulb (that is, an LED bulb that gives the same lumens as a 65W incandescent) is under 15 watts, and a \u201c100W replacement\u201d LED bulb is under 20 watts. So it should be fine to put a 100W-equivalent bulb in a 65W socket\u2014but last time I researched this, for CFLs some years ago, I saw caveats saying that you shouldn\u2019t use brighter (higher-wattage-equivalent) bulbs in recessed fixtures (and many of my fixtures are recessed). Something to do with ballasts, maybe? I forget. But as far as I can tell, it seems to be fine to put brighter LED bulbs in recessed fixtures.<\/p>\r\n
So I ended up replacing my 65W incandescent soft-white ceiling floodlight with a brighter (100W-equivalent, 1400 lumens) LED BR30 ceiling floodlight (that uses 16W), in a warmish color (3000K), made by Cree. And my living room is now noticeably brighter. Very pleasing.<\/p>\r\n
The box for the Cree bulb also specifically suggests using a Cree 65W BR30 for ceilings under 8 feet high, and a Cree 100W BR30 for ceilings over that height; it was nice to get that extra validation for my decision to get the brighter light.<\/p>\r\n
Oh, and the front\/bottom of the Cree bulb is plastic rather than glass; on the one hand, that makes it look a little cheap to me, but on the other hand, that makes it a lot less likely to shatter if the bulb falls off of my long extension pole while I\u2019m trying to install or remove it in the high ceiling fixture.<\/p>\r\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[78],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18857","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18857","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18857"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18857\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18861,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18857\/revisions\/18861"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18857"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18857"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18857"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}