According to the Energy Saving Trust, lighting accounts for 8 per cent of a typical household’s energy bill. Cutting your lighting bill is one of the easiest ways to save energy and money.

A typical house uses a mixture of light fittings and spotlight fittings. Energy efficient bulbs are available for both types of fittings. The bulbs are available in both sizes of screw fitting, and both sizes of bayonet, as well as the common GU10 spot fitting.

What are energy efficient bulbs?

There are two main types of energy efficient light bulbs available in the UK. Compact Fluorescent Lamps (CFLs) and Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs)

CFLs are what you typically think of as an energy efficient light bulb and have been available for many years. Replacing a traditional light bulb with a CFL of the same brightness will save you around £3 per year, or £50 over the lifetime of the bulb.

LEDs are now widely available and can fit both standard light fittings and spotlights, being particularly good for replacing spotlights and dimmable lights. Whilst LED’s are still more expensive to buy, their cost continues to fall and as they are more efficient than
CFLs and last longer, they will save you more money in the long term. The Energy Saving Trust estimates that replacing a halogen spotlight with an equivalent LED will save you around £4 each year, or £140 over the bulb’s lifetime.

Of course the biggest saving is to ensure you turn lights off when not required!

If you would like to find out more, why not contact WREN? As a local not-for-profit organisation we periodically run bulb buyers club offers.