Dimmer switches can provide a more relaxed feel to your home, and save you electricity as well. But with the increasing popularity of compact fluorescent lights or CFLs, many people are questioning what options they have for dimming these light bulbs - or whether it saves more electricity to use a standard CFL, or to use incandescent or halogen bulbs on a dimmer switch.
We should start out by clarifying some confusion over the relative efficiency of incandescent, halogen, and fluorescent light bulbs.
Many people put in halogen lights, beginning in the 1980's, on the incorrect idea that these bulbs are more efficient than incandescent lamps. In fact their efficiency is almost identical to that of incandescents. So don't imagine you're saving electricity by using halogen lights.
Compact fluorescent lights, however, are very efficient - it takes about one fourth as much power to light up a compact fluorescent as to power an incandescent or halogen lamp of the same luminosity. They also happen to last about eight times longer than incandescent lights.
So if you are using a dimmer switch mainly to save power, you might increase your savings by just switching your incandescent or halogen bulbs to CFLs, and leaving the dimmer switch on full power, or going back to a standard on-off switch. You'll wind up with more light for less money.
If you want a more relaxed feel all the time, one way is to put in light bulbs with a lower light output. Whether you go down from, for example, a 100 watt incandescent to a 60 watt incandescent bulb, or from a 100 watt incandescent bulb to an 18 watt CFL, you'll still get less light and you'll use less electricity. Of course, the CFL solution will save you much more electricity in the long run.
But probably you want it both ways: the low running cost and longer life of CFLs, with the ability to dim them down when their full light is too bright.
Perhaps you've heard that you cannot put a regular compact fluorescent light on a regular dimmer switch. In fact you can, but it is not recommended, because it can really reduce the life of the bulb. There is no increased risk of explosion or fire from installing a regular CFL on a standard dimmer switch - you'll only increase the risk of shortened bulb life. And because the higher cost of CFLs is offset by the fact that they outlive incandescent bulbs by a ratio of 8 to 1, putting regular CFLs on a standard dimmer destroys that cost advantage.
If you choose to dim compact fluorescent lights, you have two real alternatives: buy a special dimmer switch that is compatible with CFLs, or buy so called dimmable CFLs that are compatible with standard dimmer switches.
Both options leave you with the energy-saving advantages of compact fluorescent lights, as well as the ability to dim those lights. But for the time being, dimmable CFLs seem like the more affordable option, because fluorescent-compatible dimmer switches are prohibitively expensive, while the price gap between standard and dimmable CFLs is minuscule.
Let's consider the cost for both choices, for a lamp with three 60-watt light bulbs. Let's assume you already have a regular dimmer switch and regular incandescent lights. If you want to upgrade to compact fluorescents, your choices are:
1. Installing three 13-watt ordinary CFLs at $3 a piece, and a $49 fluorescent-compatible dimmer switch. Total cost: $58.
2. Putting in three 13-watt dimmable CFLs at $3.50 a piece, and use the existing dimmer. Total cost: $10.50!
As you can see, sticking with the existing dimmer is a much more affordable choice. Since both options use the same amount of electricity, in terms of payback period the solution with dimmable compact fluorescent lights is definitely much shorter.
Even assuming you need to get a dimmer switch because you don't have one, it is still better to buy a standard switch and dimmable CFLs. You can buy a standard dimmer switch for under $10. Even a fancy one for $25 is more affordable than a fluorescent dimmer switch at $49. And with the price gap between standard and dimmable CFLs so small, the only way a fluorescent dimmer switch will be the cheaper choice is if its price drops substantially, which it probably will over the next few years.
If your only motivation for using a dimmer switch with CFLs is to save money, and you don't already have a regular dimmer switch, I would suggest you stick with basic CFLs for now and forget about the dimmer switch, and use the money you save on the dimmer switch to buy more CFLs for other rooms in your home. Dimmer switches resulted in major savings for halogen or incandescent lights because the bulbs were so wasteful. For example, my recreation room has six 50-watt halogen bulbs on a dimmer. By using the dimmer at about the 50% setting, we use 150 watts instead of the full 300 watts. With an hour of use each day, that would save 150 x 365 watts, or 55 kilowatt hours a year.
But if we were to upgrade those halogen bulbs to 13-watt dimmable CFLs, we'd save 81 kilowatt hours a year at their full strength. By turning them down to half, we'd only save an extra 13 kilowatt hours a year - that's about $1.30 worth of electricity. Not really enough to make it worth considering this option.
Consumer reaction to dimmable CFLs has been less than overwhelmingly positive. There were certainly some teething issues with these bulbs - early burn-out, flickering light, and annoying buzzing noises. These problems have been pretty much worked out in the newer dimmable compact fluorescents. But if there isn't a strong reason for you to dim your fluorescent lights, I would suggest sticking with standard compact fluorescents for another year, until the market offers a wider range of choices for dimmable fluorescent lights. Who knows - in a year or two, fluorescent dimmer switches may drop in price as well.
Robin Green runs  www.Green-Energy-Efficient-Homes.com, a website that helps people save energy on home heating, cooling, lighting, and other household activities. For more on compact fluorescent bulbs, see the Dimmable compact fluorescent bulbs page (www.green-energy-efficient-homes.com/dimmable-compact-fluorescent-bulb.html)and the CFL savings calculator (www.green-energy-efficient-homes.com/cfl-savings-calculator.html).
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