Thursday, March 10, 2011

Lightening Up Helps With Light Out: Today's Lenten Carbon Fast Challenge

Bathroom Fixture,
Featuring Devil Ducky Option
Today's Lenten Carbon Fast challenge:
Remove one light bulb from your home. Live without it for the rest of this "carbon fast". This will decrease energy use and act as a reminder of why we are doing this. In addition, make a point of turning off lights when you leave a room or that you don't really need to have on. This simple act could save 55 lbs of CO2 emissions a year.
By complete coincedence, I just today noticed one of the bulbs in our bathroom fixture burned out. I had not expected this, since it's a compact flourescent and they're supposed to last a long time; perhaps it was damaged in the move.
I don't know when the burnout occurred, which is proof that we can do just as well without the extra light, and therefore the extra wasted energy. It may be significant that we'd repainted the bathroom in a light color; when we bought the house, the bathroom's oxblood red walls gave the room a dark and odd appearance. Perhaps the former darker walls simply needed more light, which suggests today's lesson from lighting: it may take less energy to light a room painted brightly than one dominated by light-absorbing colors.
Because this is a bathroom light, it is illuminated only a short time of day.
Please note the glow-in-the-dark devil ducky hanging from the mirror, which serves as additional source of illumination ;-)

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Well, that's an absolutely wonderful discovery. It makes sense ... when one builds a darkroom for processing photos, they typically paint it black to help keep any light out. But I never thought about the opposite being true ... a light paint makes the room seem brighter. Perfect! :-)