Blog

Mar 09, 2025

Let Inga Tell You: The language of light bulbs can easily leave one in the dark – San Diego Union-Tribune

For Part 3 in my series of columns on languages I do not speak, this is the Light Bulb Edition. I mentioned light bulbs in a previous column about my other language barriers (Coffee, Remotes,

For Part 3 in my series of columns on languages I do not speak, this is the Light Bulb Edition. I mentioned light bulbs in a previous column about my other language barriers (Coffee, Remotes, Grandchildren, iPhones, etc.), but they merit a column all their own.

It used to be that light bulbs for home use came in three denominations: 60, 75 and 100 watts. They all used the same base, and you knew how much light you’d get with each of them.

Now it’s as if they suddenly switched us to metric. (And don’t even think about it.)

Even bringing the box that held the old bulbs to the hardware store with me, I need human assistance to find the same types. I have enough techno-stress in my life without light bulb anxiety.

Awhile back, we had some Edison light bulbs strung on our property to add additional lighting in an otherwise dark area. As always, I bought a few extra bulbs for replacements. But now, alas, those bulbs have been used up and I was tasked with finding some of the same size, brightness and base. This has taken hours upon hours of my time. If the bulb isn’t exactly the same as the others on the string, both in size and light emission, it looks really odd.

I think I have looked at at least a hundred Edison bulbs on every site that sells light bulbs, including Amazon.

Since I didn’t have the box, I got out my magnifying glass and was able to determine that the teeny-weeny numbers on the base of the bulbs read 120v 60H 0.01 0.9W.

Optimistically, I tried to Google that combination and came up with … nothing.

It turns out that with LED bulbs, watts don’t mean much. They pretty much belong to an ancient dialect called “incandescent.” It’s all lumens now.

Unfortunately, like many people in my age group, I do not speak lumen; I speak watt. You need to translate watts into lumens if you are buying an LED bulb.

And then there’s a whole new language of bulb bases. I was searching for a bulb with an A19 base, but all I could find anywhere were LED bulbs with E26 bases.

We will not even go into light bulb bases. You don’t have enough time and I don’t have enough column space.

But in short, almost all A19 bulbs are E26. This means that if you have an A19 bulb at your house, it definitely has an E26 base. However, you can’t say it’s the other way around. That’s because bulbs with E26 bases come in all different shapes and sizes, not just A19.

Are you still reading? If so, I’m impressed (and worried).

So I did eventually find some bulbs that would work and carefully noted everything it says on the box, which is: LED string light – 70 lumens – clear – 11-watt replacement (replaces an 11-watt incandescent bulb) – S14 – soft white – 2700K – 1 watt – standard base.

Oh, you wanted dimmable? That’s a whole other variable.

As if lumens weren’t bad enough, now you’re getting into Kelvins, which refer to “color temperature.” Warm white bulbs have 2,700-3,000 Ks (Kelvins), while the soft whites are more in the 3,500-K range and the cool whites in the 5,000-K range. As I understand it (and I really don’t), higher K numbers are not brighter, merely whiter, but in higher numbers will eventually start to look bluer (just to make you really crazy).

We have an entire huge drawer of specialty bulbs for all the different indoor and outdoor light fixtures in our home, all labeled so we could figure out what fixtures they belong to.

When we remodeled our kitchen in 1999, I had under-the-cabinet lights put in and eight can lights in an 11-by-11 space, plus seven more can lights in our small adjoining dining space. Honestly, turn them all on at once and it looks like a nuclear blast. Having spent decades in a kitchen with a single 100-watt light bulb, I wasn’t taking any chances.

But as those 15 incandescent can lights have burned out, they’ve been replaced with LED bulbs, which don’t match the light of the previous ones at all. Ultimately they will all match, but in the interim, it’s a very weird look.

And now my wonderful desk light is starting to flicker. Except it doesn’t even have a bulb. At least not one that mere mortals could access. It’s in a “head.” I asked the company that makes it and yes, you have to replace the whole head ($298) or the whole lamp. But a light that flickers while you’re working is a light that is tempting one to rip it out of its base and throw it in the pool.

And then, to add insult to electrical injury, my longtime beloved halogen standing light next to my reading chair finally crumped. My requirements for a replacement fixture were simple: It had to have an actual changeable light bulb and this bulb had to be something standard you could get at the hardware store or even online without searching through hundreds of light bulbs, as I did for my Edison lights.

Annoyingly, most of the standing reading lamps I looked at had “heads,” just like the desk lamp that was giving me problems. Fool me once.

Checking the tag on the reading lamp that seemed to fit my criteria, it said no more than 60 watts — but that’s only if it’s an incandescent bulb. Apparently for an LED bulb, you can use any wattage you want in it. (Disclaimer: If your house burns down, this is what I was told by the lighting store person. So sue her.)

Just to clarify, a 60-watt incandescent bulb is a 7- to 9-watt LED bulb and is 730-800 lumens.

Did you ever want to know all this? I sure didn’t. But now, alas, I do.

Inga’s lighthearted looks at life appear regularly in the La Jolla Light. Reach her at [email protected]. ♦