One of the biggest trends in the last 20 years is how to save energy through lower power consumption. And of course, lighting is one of those critical energy wasters for many home users regardless of the size of a home. It takes a certain amount of electrical energy to light an average persons home and great reductions can be made. By now, most people know this is a reality with compact fluorescent light bulbs where energy reduction can be as much a 75% with a corresponding reduction on your electric bill.

But there is often some sacrifice that still has to be made when it comes to lighting with compact fluorescent light bulbs. There may be a couple of ways to better incorporate this technology into energy savings in your home in concert with other efficient lighting.

In peoples homes, lighting serves many different purposes, from reading to kitchen tasks and lighting general areas such as bathrooms or a family room. Because there are so many different activities that go on in the home, its important not to take the approach that one-size-fits-all when it comes to lighting. But thats the way many people approach energy efficiency in their home, outfitting the entire home with compact fluorescent without thinking about what they might be doing in those individual spaces.

It can be a tricky balancing act between what looks good aesthetically and what is a true energy-saving opportunity. Another aspect that comes into play many times is that people need to do some kind of dimming or other kinds of lighting control, which dont always work well with energy-saving compact fluorescent lights. So its good to come up with an integrated strategy that might work best to accomplish energy efficiency in a home.

Probably the biggest thing to keep in mind when it comes to compact fluorescent lighting is that the standard off-the-shelf compact fluorescent is not a dimmable product. If you have a system that does dimming in your house, it can be difficult to incorporate compact fluorescent so that it will look as good as standard incandescent lighting. If youve gone to all the expense to have a dimming system with scenes and total lighting control, then almost no compact fluorescent is really going to be the ultimate solution.

In cases like that, it makes sense to use that lighting control system to keep lights shut off when theyre not been used. Many times, you could incorporate occupancy sensors that will shut off the lights when nobodys in the room and that can be used in a complete lighting control system. If you just have a few dimmers on the wall, you can use some dimmable compact fluorescent light bulbs that will dim down to lower light levels making it acceptable in many situations.

There are some that go down to 20% of full light output, and then there are others to go all the way down to about 1 or 2%. These can be used in standard incandescent dimmers that you might have on the wall in your home. That can take care of some of the dimming that you need, while other on-off circuits can be handled by standard compact fluorescent for maximum energy savings.

It might also be a good time to think about what you are using for track lighting, or recessed lighting. If you have standard incandescent lamps, they could be replaced with halogen bulbs at a lower wattage. In many cases, this is a better way to handle energy efficiency while still getting the correct lighting effect through dimming or display. Halogen technology has improved much over the past 10 years and its a good solution to reduce energy, even though it wont be as much energy saved as a fluorescent light bulb. Most people like the way halogen illumination looks, with its white, crisp light that really does a good job for many types of track lighting.

To put it simply, you should look for areas where you can use compact fluorescent for energy savings legitimately without hurting the aesthetic aspects of your home. In places where you still need to have a dimming capability or greater lighting control, you may want to incorporate halogen as a part of your total strategy. You may also be able to incorporate some new LED lighting that has a very low wattage and still provides a fair amount of light for many different kinds of tasks. It may not be able to replace the higher wattage of either halogen or fluorescent, but it will provide light for an area and can be used as part of that total scheme for reducing energy.

Take a look at how you use lighting your home and think about what you want to accomplish with light, because thats still the ultimate goal, to have your home lighted in a pleasing manner without excuse. Apart from energy savings, thats still the main purpose of light and if you miss that, no amount of energy savings is ever going to make you feel better about a lighted space that isnt quite right.