is it weird i feel nostalgic for cfl bulbs now?

There's a shed where I live. It has electricity (ooh, fancy) and in there is a lone CFL bulb that's been in there for... 7 years or close to it? When turned on cold, it takes a good solid minute for the gas to charge so it achieves full brightness.

But once that gas is charged up...

...it still works. True, this CFL doesn't charge up as fast as it used to, but that electronic ballast is still doing its job 7 years later and the light still illuminates properly.

I remember back when CFL was a new thing. Everybody hated it, and I know exactly why. It was for two reasons.

First, early CFLs were unreliable because manufacturers were still trying to figure out how to make a ballast that lasts (they didn't, and failed too quickly).

Second, the color temperature was all wrong because they all had that bog standard fluorescent work shop light color. You know those 4 foot lights and what kind of light color they give off? Yeah, those things. Early CFLs had the same color temperature. Something like that is fine for department stores and garages, but absolutely awful on the eyes for use in the home.

Some time passes, the ballasts were improved, and thankfully the color temperature was adjusted to "warmer". Instead of that stark white/green-ish light color, now it was more yellow/orange, i.e. the "soft white" type. Okay, good.

But just when the CFL finally got to the point of being just right, LED came on the scene and displaced CFL seemingly overnight.

This of course made me wonder if household CFLs are still made now.

Oh, yes they are. Production of them never stopped.

And some of them actually look... cool? Have you see the triple tube and quad tube flavors? Looks kinda neat.

The quads in particular have the most variety for base type. Some are standard screw-in, then there's GX10Q-4, G24Q-2, and so on. I have absolutely no idea where these would be used, but I guess there are special applications where these pin type connectors are needed.

My favorite is, of course, is the standard "squiggly" spiral tube. I didn't like them back when they were new, but now I do. All the old ballast problems with them were fixed years ago, the color temperature is now correct, and they're visually more interesting compared to a plain LED bulb.

HOWEVER... the coolest looking household LED is what's known as the Edison bulb. Those things just look awesome. Possibly the best modern combination of art and function for a light bulb ever made.

Even so, I think there's still a place for squiggly CFLs. The CFL is one of those things that looked weird at first, kinda went away (but not really) when LEDs became available, and now I think they've come back around, stylistically.

Published 2025 Feb 20