I found this thread while searching for info about CFL's and fluorescent lights. Like the original poster, I have replaced nearly all of the lighting in my home with some version of fluorescent.
My interest in fluorescent lighting started in the mid 1980's when I was working for the now defunct Montgomery Ward stores. I worked in the Home Improvemnt department and one day we got two pallets stacked high with light fixtures from a Wards store in Montana that had been closed. In this group of lights were about ten packages of Lights Of America circline bulb/ballast adapters.
This was about 1985/6 and CFL's as we know them today were not yet available. Circlines were really the only option for replacing incans in table lamps and other home fixtures. These LOA's were originally marked $9.99 but had been reduced to a price of 99 cents! (the bulb was included) I bought all ten of them. They had magnetic ballasts, the electronic ballast had to wait until the 1990's.
The modern tri-phosphor lamps were still years away, so these still had the old haloposphor bulbs: cool white and warm white. Even the warm white ones were still too off color to blend in but they were much better than the cool whites, which stood out like a freak show in a room full of incandescents.
I tried giving a couple of the cool white ones (whose light color I hated) to a younger brother and his wife, but they returned them in a couple of weeks later, she didn't like them! (Big surprise.)
I still have about 5 or 6 working ballasts from these lights. The bulbs have all since died or gotten broken.
(As a kid in the early 1970's, I can still remember a neighbor that lived down the block who had a fluorescent bulb in a table lamp placed in their living room window. I remember walking by in the evening and recognizing the cold greenish glow of a cool-white bulb. Amazing to think that the wife would allow a fluorescent bulb in the picture window of her living room of all places).
Yes, I agree 100% with the posters' complaining about the fluorescent light assortments at Home Depot and other stores, all magentic ballasts with cool white bulbs, yecch. You'd think it was still the 1960's. None of the fixtures look like they would be much at home in a home enviroment; a worskhop or laundry room yes, maybe a kitchen. Totally out of place in a bedroom, bathroom or living room area.
I have linear 4 foot fluorescent fixtures in three rooms (kitchen, bathroom and laundry) and a ceiling fixture with 2 foot bulbs in a walk-through closet area off the bedroom. Some have gone for a dozen years without a bulb change.
I did have a GE torchiere using a 2D fluorescent bulb. The first one from Home Depot was a damaged return that had been put back on the shelf, the second only lasted about a week, the third one lasted about 15-18 months. In both cases the ballasts died. I have since replaced it with a torchiere that has a standard incandescent socket which has a circline ballast/bulb combination that fits.
After my experience, I would recommend avoiding any fluoresecnt fixture that uses a '2D' style of bulb.
I experienced no better luck with a 'Lithonia Lighting' ceiling fluorescent fixture that used two circline bulbs (22 and 32 watt). It lasted only about 15 months before its ballast died too. It was replaced with a fixture having standard incan sockets but fitted with 23 watt CFL's.
At least in these two situations I won't be stuck with a fixture that uses a proprietary ballast that would probably cost close to the price of the entire fixture to replace.
I have circline fluorescent fixtures/adapters in 5 other fixtures, including the living room.
Where I can fit them, I like the circlines much better than CFL's. The light from the circlines is less contrasty than CFL, the shadows are lighter. A CFL bulb, IMO is too bright in a fixture where the bare bulb is visible, an unshielded circline bulb is no harsher than any other exposed linear tube fluorescent bulb.
While CFL's die dramatic and sometimes scary deaths, billowing out plumes of acrd smoke and melting parts of their plastic housings, all my circlines have died quiet old fashioned fluorescent deaths, ends of the tubes going black and bulbs glowing dimly or blinking excessively at startup.
While I agree that Lights Of America has terrible quality control on their CFL's and electronic ballasts, I do very much like their 2700K circline replacement bulbs. Even warm white or soft white is too cool-colored for me when mixed in with incans. I know there are people here who like the so-called "daylight/sunlight" fluorescents but to me they look very unnatural.
