It's not easy being green

I've been on an obsessive search for light fixtures for Maison Derriere that are 1) affordable, 2) not ugly, and 3) energy efficient. Even though this will be a rental after a while and thus the electric bills won't be my problem, I still feel obligated reduce fuel consumption where I can.

This being the South, we use ceiling fans. Happily what Southerners have always known about using fans to keep rooms comfortable bears itself out on the energy consumption front. The light fixtures on the fans, on the other hand, typically take about 240 watts of heat inducing incandescents to run. The fan winds up blowing that heat around the room. Bummer.

Halogen bulbs are better than incandescent, in general, in that they give off more light for the wattage used so you don't really need as much. They can burn HOT though, and the fluorescent fan lights I've found are still in the 100-200 watt range.

Now if you're willing to drop some money, there are some really sexy options out there for compact fluorescent lighting. American Fluorescent Lighting and Modern Fan are a few examples. Fluorescents don't have to be cold flickery noisy light anymore either. Better quality CF bulbs are pretty hard to tell from incandescents. They're more expensive, of course, but last for years and use about a tenth of the energy.

Eventually, I picked out this fan from the Home Despot. It meets my specifications for price and Energy Star compliance, and I thought they weren't that ugly. Mr. Nola begs to differ. He hates them. Well, I can see where he's coming from.

So I think we're going to wind up with a fan that uses regular light bulbs and just put our own compact fluorescent bulbs in it. The screw-in CF bulbs aren't AS efficient or long-lived as the pin-connection kind, but it's still a big improvement over incandescents. This is the most likely selection.

The process of choosing ceiling fans has involved multiple trips to Lowes and Home Depot, and many hours of internet research. It's a shopping compulsion I inherited from my mother. In meantime I've picked out sconces, mini-pendants, and track lighting without too much obsessing. Well, I did buy one track set and return it, but you kind of have to see stuff outside the store to get an idea what it really looks like, right? They're all either CF or halogen fixtures, so hopefully that will offset our 9 months a year of air conditioning consumption.

Well, at least it's something.