All in all, the California Title 24 legislation is pretty progressive. With regard to lighting, it is really focused toward making you think about the lighting in your home. You really have two primary approaches toward lighting your living space: either committing fully to fluorescent lighting or using dimmers throughout your home for energy savings. The state is also clearly looking forward to LED lighting, but frankly the industry isn’t ready to support that yet. However, the rate of growth is so strong it will only be a few more years before that changes.
If you commit to fluorescent lighting remember to consider the color temperature and color rendering index of each lamp. Right now people aren’t accustomed to the way everything appears under fluorescents, but I think in a generation the quality of fluorescent lighting will become our new “normal.” With technological advances the fluorescent and LED sources will improve and either the manufacturers will make them more like natural light or (more likely) we’ll just grow to accept the spectral profiles of those sources.
However, if you aren’t ready to make that leap yet you can use dimming systems. I think everyone should use dimming in their homes even if they don’t care at all about energy efficiency, since I believe the quality of life benefits shouldn’t be ignored.
And instead of just using local dimmers, hopefully this will stimulate the use of wider-ranging lighting systems. System that enable you to program lighting for entire rooms rather than just adjusting each circuit. There are countless options out there so don’t feel limited by the adoption of more stringent energy efficiency standards as they progress from the west coast eastward.
Tags: California, complaints, dimmers, efficiency, fluorescents
