Lighthouse one said:
I bought several of the new DAYLIGHT COLOR compact fluor bulbs. They are much better!! A nice white light like the reveal bulbs. Wal-mart had em...They even seem to be closer to the actual stated wattage...like 40 watts really seems like a 40! I don't have the package anymore- but the color temp was 5 or 6000 I think?
Well, low-wattage CFLs, such as 25W and 40W equivalents usually exceed advertized specs, 60W is usually about the same, and 75/100W equivalents are generally dimmer than advertized in my experience -- the lumens per watt for CFL is about the same at all power levels, but for incandescent, the higher wattage bulbs are relatively more efficient.
Also, since the brightness of a CFL is determined by the length of the tubes, the 9W CFLs (40 equivalent) are usually the ideal size since they don't need a lot of tubing to get enough brightness. This means it's usually a better fit as well, unlike some CFLs that extrude from the fixtures.
As for 6500K, that's too far toward the blue end of the spectrum to me. 5000k is fine, in fact, of all the linear fluorescents I've seen, the 5000K are by far the best for color rendering. I like 3500K in most places at home though as it still appears warmer, but it a MAJOR improvement compared to incandescent. 4200k would be my preferred color temp if it weren't for the fact that all the 4200K bulbs have horrible color rendering -- it's always seemed odd to me that there can be 87 CRI fluorescents in 3500k, and 94CRI bulbs in 5000k, but right in the middle at 4200k is always 75CRI or under.