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LEDs are over ten times more efficient and the directionality of the light can be solved in a number of ways.

What are you smoking?

Incandescent from my closet: 100 watts, 1690 Lumens or 16.9 lumens/watt.

CFL: 27 watts, 1750 lumens or 64.8 lumens/watt.

Let's find a few LED lights...

LED spotlight: 8 watts, 120 lumens, 15 lumens/watt.

Bulb toward end of page: 10 watts, 200 lumens, 20 lumens/watt.

How about this $70 bulb? Surely that one must be bright! Nope: 10 watts, 340 lumens, 34 lumens/watt. Better, though -- half as efficient as the CFL, but still too dim for good room lighting.

LEDs are pretty cool for certain uses, but they SUCK for general purpose lighting.

I actually was using packaging adjectives to help people interested in shopping (that was what the quotes were for).

here is a chart on color temperature (of course they do invert it just for fun).

here is a chart of CRI ("full spectrum is greater than 90", and higher means more colors are distinguishable, it makes a HUGE difference).

I actually was using packaging adjectives to help people interested in shopping (that was what the quotes were for).

here is a chart on color temperature (of course they do invert it just for fun).

here is a chart of CRI ("full spectrum is greater than 90", and higher means more colors are distinguishable, it makes a HUGE difference).

CFL, dimmer at night for the night light - can add to the mercury content for a child if the light blows up.

So use an LED night light. They're much more suited to the task.

Someday, we'll be using LEDs for general house lighting, and thus remove all the problems with CFLs and Incandescents.

Go ask - women do not like the light they throw off.

AFAIK, the two main quality issues with fluorescent lights are:

1. Ballast frequency, which is a very similar issue to refresh rate.
2. Color temperature, which is essentially whether the light is yellowish or neutral or blue/greenish.

With CFLs, the ballast frequency issue was solved a long time ago. Basically, the voltage needs to be stepped up way higher than line voltage (120V in the US, 220V many other places). The low-tech way to do this is with a transformer. This means you get 60 Hz (or 50 Hz, whatever) current at that high frequency. That means flickering. Flickering doesn't happen with incandescent bulbs because it is heat of the filament that is causing the light to be emitted. The electrical current going through the bulb goes to zero 120 times a second (with 60 Hz power), but the filament's thermal mass is high enough that the bulb "coasts" through the zero voltage (and zero current) crossing and continues to emit light. You can even turn off an incandescent and watch it continue to glow for a fraction of a second after power is removed, because it takes time for the filament to cool. But this continuous lighting thing is not the case with a fluorescent, as I understand it. The gas in the tube only produces light when there's a voltage, and it stops pretty much instantaneously when it's not being electrically excited. Thus, with a fluorescent and a low-tech ballast, you get an effect similar to what it looks like when your monitor is set at a painfully low refresh rate, only not quite as bad, but still annoying.

But, as I said, compact fluorescents don't suffer from this issue. The reason is they have electronic ballasts. Instead of simple, dumb circuit with a transformer in it, they have a circuit that steps up the voltage, but it converts it to a much higher-frequency A/C voltage before it gets into the tube. I'm not sure of the frequency, but googling indicates it is in the tens of thousands of Hz. So, it's fast enough your eye really can't perceive it.

The other issue, color temperature is a little different story. As this explanation says, "Warm light is preferred for living spaces because it is more flattering to skin tones and clothing." I think this is the key reason for aesthetic objections to CFLs. Incandescents produce warm light at a color temperature of about 2700K, because that's what happens when you heat up a filament. With compact fluorescents, different options are available. If you want something similar to what you're used to with an incandescent, you should choose a 2700K CFL! It's not at all uncommon for CFLs to come in color temperatures in the range of 4000K or 5000K. That will appear considerably bluer or even weird and greenish compared to an incandescent. Nobody wants their skin tone to appear overly greenish, so 2700K it is, for aesthetic purposes, in most cases.

On a side note, things are different if you want to, say, take pictures of things. In that case, you might want to go with a higher color temperature, because 2700K is considerably warmer (yellower) than what you see outside on a nice sunny day.

What I would like to see is really bright CFLs,

Oh, you mean like this one that draws 105W and is rated at 6900 lumens and is equivalent to about a 400W incandescent bulb?

like 150W equivalent, which would use about 30W.

Ah, I see, you're only looking for about 2600 lumens then. So, depending on color temperature, you probably want something like this 2700K one or this 4100K one or this 5100K one.

Unfortunately things seem to be going the other way, as at my local store I can now only buy 18W CFLs

There is that. I have been able to buy 27W CFLs at a local store, and I believe I have even seen something around 30W, but they are hard to find.

What I would like to see is really bright CFLs,

Oh, you mean like this one that draws 105W and is rated at 6900 lumens and is equivalent to about a 400W incandescent bulb?

like 150W equivalent, which would use about 30W.

Ah, I see, you're only looking for about 2600 lumens then. So, depending on color temperature, you probably want something like this 2700K one or this 4100K one or this 5100K one.

Unfortunately things seem to be going the other way, as at my local store I can now only buy 18W CFLs

There is that. I have been able to buy 27W CFLs at a local store, and I believe I have even seen something around 30W, but they are hard to find.

What I would like to see is really bright CFLs,

Oh, you mean like this one that draws 105W and is rated at 6900 lumens and is equivalent to about a 400W incandescent bulb?

like 150W equivalent, which would use about 30W.

Ah, I see, you're only looking for about 2600 lumens then. So, depending on color temperature, you probably want something like this 2700K one or this 4100K one or this 5100K one.

Unfortunately things seem to be going the other way, as at my local store I can now only buy 18W CFLs

There is that. I have been able to buy 27W CFLs at a local store, and I believe I have even seen something around 30W, but they are hard to find.

What I would like to see is really bright CFLs,

Oh, you mean like this one that draws 105W and is rated at 6900 lumens and is equivalent to about a 400W incandescent bulb?

like 150W equivalent, which would use about 30W.

Ah, I see, you're only looking for about 2600 lumens then. So, depending on color temperature, you probably want something like this 2700K one or this 4100K one or this 5100K one.

Unfortunately things seem to be going the other way, as at my local store I can now only buy 18W CFLs

There is that. I have been able to buy 27W CFLs at a local store, and I believe I have even seen something around 30W, but they are hard to find.