This section contains a basic profile of lighting use in residential households. It includes brief discussions about the characteristics and location of lights used in residential households, as well as descriptions of the amount of electricity used for lighting and variations in households' consumption of electricity for lighting. The majority of light bulbs in residential households are incandescent. Fluorescent Lights of All Types Thirteen percent, or 69.5 million lights used one or more hours per day are fluorescent.
Fluorescent lights tend to be used more hours per day than incandescent lights.
According to the RECS Survey, compact fluorescent lights are used in 8.9 percent of residential households, although 49 percent of the homes reported knowing about them. The percentage of households using compact fluorescent lights varies slightly by Census region, with households in the Northeast being somewhat more likely to use them, presumably due to higher electricity prices. The Lighting Supplement data show that less than one percent of all lights used 15 minutes or more per day are compact fluorescent. Halogen Lights A halogen light is a type of incandescent light that is slightly more efficient than the common incandescent light. These differences are much smaller than the comparison with the compact fluorescent, but the typical cost of a halogen light is 4 dollars versus 20-22 dollars for a compact fluorescent.