The light fitting in question has three globe sockets, which is a bad thing for a start, even if I do only put small, low-wattage, energy-saving globes in each one. But the fitting is mysteriously, intricately bound up with the ceiling fan in a way I'd need an electrician to disentangle.
The fact that it requires three globes means I have to buy two packs of two. When choosing these two packs of two, I carefully tick off every item on the list that follows, for each represents some past mistake in globe-buying:
Energy-saving non-incandescent spiral globes: check
5 watts (25 watts in old money): check
Bayonet caps not screw-ins: check
The bayonet caps are standard size, not those little skinny ones: check
All globes for the fitting are the same brand: check
I made this purchase some time ago. And so when the second of the three little old-style incandescent globes in the light fitting gave up the ghost a few days ago, shortly after the first, I prided myself on having bought the desired replacements in sufficient quantities, and on having checked all the relevant details.
And I've just aggravated a very nasty old neck injury craning up to screw them into the ancient, dusty, crumbling fitting. Headache escalating to migraine tomorrow unless I spend the next few hours with a hot wheatbag draped around my neck and then sleep with my good friend Diazepam.
Did I notice, when I bought these globes, that they come in both 'Warm White' and 'Cool White'?
Did I buy one box of the one and the other box of the other?
Have I just spent twenty minutes craning up at the ceiling with my head tipped back, something my physio has told me I must never ever do, jiggling with glass shades, delicately trying to get the spring-loaded thingies straight, getting the globes stuck crooked, getting them unstuck, dropping the little tiny screws on the cat, shrieking obscenities that could no doubt be clearly heard three doors away and nearly losing my balance several times before I finally got them all in straight, got down off the stepladder and triumphantly switched on the light, before I realised the error of my ways?
And is 'Warm White' really quite remarkably different from 'Cool White'?
What do you reckon?
24 comments:
Warm white and cool white are different, I think cool white is closer to the old fluoro colour but warm white is supposed to resemble daylight.
Also, even though you've probably realised this, you don't have to put a fluoro in every socket in the fitting unless you're bothered by the assymmetry or something.
I reckon...
Bugger global warming and invest in paraffin lamps.
"unless you're bothered by the assymmetry"
'Bothered' doesn't cover it. Given that what this house really needs is a team of builders and decorators that I wouldn't have a snowball's chance in hell of paying for, it's important to me to get the little aesthetic details right, at least.
There is a definite difference. I really don't like the cool white as it is very fluoro like. A mix may work though.
No, jen, the mix is totally unacceptable. Totally.
I"m sorry, I had to laugh. We've been through the warm white/cool white thing too. We have two fittings: in the same space: one takes five bulbs and one takes three. Both have assorted warm and cool whites. And the buggers last much longer than the old ones too, but we can't bring ourselves to throw out globes with life left in them. Embrace change, they say. Bah humbug, say I.
Ah, needing three and having to buy four reminds me of the hot dog vs bun/roll issue. At least here in the US, packages of hot dogs never have the same number of items as do packages of rolls. So they never match up.
The marketing ploy of packing multiple items together instead of allowing you to buy the number you want has always infuriated me.
PC, I hear you...two days after the toothbrush incident, we had a lightbuld incident..it's a scourge...toothbrushes, lightbulbs, milk, bread, phone plans...
Warm white removes twenty years from your appearance, and cool white adds twenty years... the implications of two thirds /one third of this makes MY head ache, let alone yours.
Assuming I look my age (a reckless assumption, but let it stand for the sake of the arithmetic), that adds twenty years and then removes forty, which makes me look ... um ... 34.
And I looked better at 34, head to foot, than I ever have before or since. So maybe I'll leave the cool one there.
We have the same thing in the bedroom - one 'daylight' and one 'warm' so we end up with a mix of orange and grey light. Most peculiar, but as they last so long and are such a bugger to put up we have lived with it for the past 2 years. Only, what six? more before the buggers blow.
Candlelight's very flattering, doncha think?
PC, don't forget the dust in your eyes. Especially bad in those (Sixties?) apartments that have sprayed concrete ceilings.
I always always ALWAYS buy bayonets, and I always always ALWAYS need screwies. We have an entire cupboard of incorrect lightbulbs underneath the sink.
Clearly architects decided we needed lights above our heads some time before servants became unfashionable.
But I still wish most of my light fittings were on the wall, where I don't have to crane my neck (injury in progress there) to replace the bulbs.
Good luck with the wheatbag, PC. I hope you stave it off.
Bugger bugger bugger. Sorry to hear your tale of woe, and it so reminds me of many of mine.
I go the 'warm white' preference. I find it's more like your standard incandescent light (which is what I want if I turn on a light switch). I do have a 'cool' globe in the dunny and people are always forgetting to turn off the light, 'cos it looks like natural light coming in the (tiny) window, and it's only the equivalent of 40 watts anyway. I was suspicious to start with, because I remember when the first low energy globes came out the light from them was really orange and they took ages to warm up to operating strength. These new ones are much better.
I hope the headache doesn't eventuate.
If God had meant us to suffer, She would never have invented wheat bags. Credit must also be given to my mates codeine and diazepam. And pituzofin or whatever it is, the prophylactic anti-migraine one that makes you put on 20 pounds at the moment the pharmacist hands you the pills and then fall over in a narcoleptic coma.
I wanted Warm light all along -- the Cool light makes everything look as though one is being viciously interrogated in some horrid law-enforcement interview room about something unspeakable that one might, in fact, have done. Or as though one is playing the piano in a Michael Haneke film. That or vomiting on the ladies' room floor. Possibly both.
If I can get up the nerve to re-approach the light fitting without letting it smell my fear, like the dishes in that Judy Horacek cartoon, switch the Cool one for the newly purchased Warm one (in a pack of 2, of course), I will go get the big ladder this time. But that is a whole new set of dangers and risks, because it means I have to GO INTO THE SHED ...
cool white is better to paint by, otherwise next morning the pictures look nasty.
I don't allow mirrors in my studio. That would be scary.
I'm so glad someone else is stuck with those @#**&# combination fan and lights as well.
Was almost as though you were writing of a day at my house - except my cat runs and hides when the swearing starts!
As I'm not sure about the protocol on disposing of these new fangled light globes when and if they ever expire, I have continued to buy the old style ones, but for the most part have no device by which to climb up and install them. So one by one rooms in the house are navigated at night by torchlight and candles which are of course cheap, flattering (were anybody to notice) and reasonably effective for roughly making out shapes. Has anybody had to chuck out their new, old ones yet? And how did they do it?
I am sorry to hear you too are a member of the
'God tilting my head back and looking up is a pain in the neck' club."
re What do you think?"
like PK and Zoe above, I think it is all an evil plot.
Get one groovy lamp thingy from SnowGum
and carry it from room to room.
Jane Austen wrote it ALL before Edison was even born.
They had dinner at 3 pm in the good old Jane Austen days, Brownie, so they could go to bed early and save money on candles.
It's very. very evil but I laughed a bit when I read this post. Only because of having been there myself of course, except for the bit about dropping screws on the cat, becasue on these occasions he is always on the top of the ladder himself, helping.
Cool white is very white.
Warm white is closer to the incandescent, a bit yellower.
Another way to thing of it is that cool white is horrible :)
When they come to take me away it'll be over a combination of lightbulb problems, changed road conditions and computer setups, plus photocopy jams.
Are we the only poor bastards in history who've had to deal, quite often, with these irritating changes, and no-one arround to help? (That's the kind of question I'll be shouting to the heavens as they lock me up or squash me underfoot.)
I never saw a photocopier paperjam that couldn't be fixed with a pair of eyebrow tweezers and a delicate touch.*
Putting your glasses on doesn't hurt, either.
*Need I add that it's always s good idea to switch the machine off first?
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