Hoarding Light Bulbs

The other day I was relaxing with one of my magazines (not sure which one) when I came across an article on Bunny Williams.  If you don’t know who Bunny is, the easiest way to explain it is that she is to interior design what Martha Stewart is to food.  Anyway, the article was discussing her habit of buying and stashing away light bulbs – like hundreds of them.  I was intrigued.  She wasn’t alone in this movement of what appeared be a mad dash at buying up what seemed to be not so unusual looking light bulbs.  Were these light bulbs being discontinued?  There were two particular bulbs that were discussed.  One was a crown bulb – these are the light bulbs you sometimes see at restaurants.  They look like a regular light bulb dipped in silver.  The second was a soft pink light bulb made by Sylvania which apparently gives off a beautiful and warm light.

I dug a little deeper and found out something some of you may be interested in – especially since lighting is important in design.  Apparently there is a newer Federal Energy standard that plans to phase out certain incandescent light bulbs (such as clear, soft and frosted ones just to name a few) over a period of a couple years. OMG.  The time period for this phase out was suppose to begin January 1, 2012 (that’s like now) through January 1, 2014.  So why not just make energy improvements to these bulbs?  Reason is that these bulbs would never be able to meet the new standards.  Gosh, I hope the movement isn’t going toward compact florescent (I hate the lighting from those bulbs!).  Anyway, these energy efficient standards are nothing new (except to me) and are sweeping across the world.  One guy from France complained that the soft pink light bulbs were no longer on the shelf and difficult to find.

The mention of a pink light bulb sounded so charming that I did a quick search and found some of the Sylvania ones on Amazon (here).  I placed my order and now wait for my magical bulbs.  Who knows, if they are as fantastic as they sound, I too may horde a few.  Hee, hee!

If you’re interested in learning more about this energy standard and how it may affect you, I found a good overview here.

Images:  Budget Wise Home