How To Choose Light Bulbs for your Recessed Lighting

[TehKaiser]

No, no, no!!! A lower color temperature is a WARMER light. The higher the Kelvin the colder the light becomes.

[bladder1010]

She's a cutie! Hubba-hubba!

[LightBulbMarket]

Gotcha. Honestly, I don't know what kind of heat the ballast or the base of a cfl produces. If your cans were put in the last 4 or 5 years, it more than likely has a sensor that will turn the light off if it gets too hot. If it's older than that, without knowing the manufacturer and their specs, I'm afraid I can't guarantee that they won't catch on fire. I will say that you have a high powered lamp in there and thus more light.

[LightBulbMarket]

Wow! You are using a cfl bulb with over 4 times the brightness of the incandescent you were using. Do you mean that the cfls are burning out quickly? If you went down to a 20 watt cfl you would be getting twice the brightness of your old 65 watt floods.

[LightBulbMarket]

Hi TripleEarth. That is a great question. The first thing to do is to measure the diameter of your can and look for a bulb that is about 1" less in diameter. The bulb number is how you figure out the diameter....so a BR40 is 40/8 or 5" wide and goes in 6" cans. Make sense? Then you'll just have to play with the wattage. Many new cans can only handle up to 65 watts or so or it heats up and the bulb will go out to cool off the can. This may take more trial and error.