Starry Night Lights wants to encourage you to take steps to reduce global warming. It is this reason, and our love for our environment and especially our night sky, which has lead us to support the use of environmentally friendly lighting systems and structures. We realize that taking steps to improve our environment can be difficult, but we also know that if people come together as a whole, we will greatly increase our chance of making a positive impact for the sake our environment. As a result, we have some basic steps that you can take to help lessen global warming.

• Buy energy- efficient appliances- Though one may initially find energy- efficient appliances to be more expensive, they actually save you money in the long run. This is because one uses a lot less energy when using these appliances. By looking for products with the Energy Star label, one will be ensured the most efficient appliances.

• Buy/ use compact fluorescent bulbs- Compact fluorescent light bulbs are more expensive than incandescent light bulbs, but they can last up to 10 times as long! They will lower the amount of energy you use, and save you about 15 dollars a year and by the time of their replacement, approximately 60 dollars. Best of all, you will be greatly reducing the amount of carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere.

• Speak out- If we come together and push our government into becoming more economically conscious, we can move forward in passing legislation which could help lessen the impact of global warming. We must push for; cleaner cars and power plants, use of renewable recourses and more efficient appliances and the like. This way we can have a fair chance at fighting global warming.

Starry Night Lights is proud to announce its participation in the US Government’s Energy Star Lighting program. Given our focus on preserving the environment in general, and the night sky in particular, it only makes sense for us to participate in this program. Energy Star is a joint program of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Energy designed to help us all save money and protect the environment through energy efficient products and practices. Results are already adding up. Americans, with the help of ENERGY STAR, saved enough energy in 2006 alone to avoid greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to those from 25 million cars — all while saving $14 billion on their utility bills.

Energy conservation related to outdoor lighting makes incredible sense. Lighting consumes roughly 25% of all the electricity produced in the US. If we can make major strides in conserving energy while lighting, this can add up incredibly fast. On top of energy saving light bulbs and light fixtures, home and business owners are encouraged to strongly consider installing motion sensors on all their exterior lights. Motion sensors can ensure that your outdoor lights are off the vast majority of the time and yet turn them on the instant they are needed. In many cases, homeowners can reduce their outdoor lighting bill by close to 99%. This is a huge savings that adds up day after day and year after year. Given that motion sensors start around $60, you can pay for their purchase with just a few months of reduced utility bills. After that, the savings continue year after year after year.

Starry Night Lights is pleased to announce the introduction of energy efficient LED light bulbs by Lumoform. LED light bulbs are the most energy efficient lights currently on the market and Lumoform LED’s are the best available. LED’s consume far less energy than incandescents, halogens or even compact fluorescent light bulbs for a given application. LED’s typically use about 1/10th the energy of incandescents and less than 1/2 that of compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFL). Additionally, LED light bulbs last far longer than any other solutions. In many instances, LED’s will last in excess of 50,000 hours. This constitutes several decades under normal usage scenarios. You can install an LED light today and simply forget about them. This is especially great when you’re looking at recessed lights in high ceilings. In many homes with cathedral ceilings, recessed lights can be over 15 feet high. This makes bulb replacement a difficult (and perhaps scary) proposition. If you make the switch to LED’s today, you may never have to change your light bulbs again!

Lumoform LED light bulbs are an excellent way to save money and reduce your carbon footprint. Over the life of the bulb, you can save over $400 dollars in energy savings. This is calculated in today’s dollars. Given the fact that energy prices seem to be rising steadily, your savings may actually be considerably larger. Additionally, you’ll save over one ton of carbon emissions. This is a significant savings for just one bulb. As we worry about the effects of global warming and how it can affect our lives, savings like this are substantial and should be looked at seriously. Many other greenhouse gas reductions will require significant technological advances and/or lifestyle changes. How much easier can it get than to simply replace one type of light bulb with another? This is an absolute no brainer

Modern design isn’t what it was years ago. Previously, a home that was described as modern referred strictly to its looks. It had modern lines or a modern look to it. It had all the features you’d expect. Very little (if any) thought was given to efficiency. In our time of global warming, modern homes are starting to take on a much more environmentally friendly and environmentally conscientious approach. Modern homes still have the cool lines and look they’ve always had, however they now use the most energy efficient designs, appliances and features. This only makes sense as not a day goes by that we don’t hear about the destruction we’re heaping on our poor planet. Does your modern home have what it takes to be modern in this day and age? Let’s take a look…

You designed your home to be a bold statement of who you are. No detail was overlooked. Or was it? In many instances, the outdoor lights chosen for a home were almost an afterthought. ‘Oh, yeah, code requires that we put some exterior lighting in. Let’s see what’s available at the local lighting store’. If this describes your home building experience, you know how limiting that can be. Most lighting showrooms focus on interior lighting. The outdoor lights that they display are what everybody is buying. Face it, display space is expensive. No lighting store is going to be able to display everything under the sun. So, what do they do, they pick what’s been popular. Which is very likely the same as what was popular last year (since they can’t know what people will buy if they don’t display it in the first place).

Starry Night Lights offers a huge selection of night sky friendly outdoor lights for your home or business. Building something on the modern side? We have a large selection of modern outdoor lights that are as distinctive as the homes they’ll adorn. Checkout the SPJ 601-DL from SPJ Lighting. This distinctively modern outdoor light fixture is hand crafter from stainless steel for years of service. It has a closed top (hence the ‘DL’ designation) so no light will shine wastefully up into the night sky while it’s solid sides ensure that you won’t be keeping your neighbors awake at night. Night sky and neighbor friendly are two requirements that most nicer communities have or will soon be adding to their outdoor lighting codes. Even if yours doesn’t yet have one, wouldn’t it be better to make more efficient use of the light your producing? Of course, it would.

The downward facing nature of this and many other fixtures offered by Starry Night Lights is an ideal candidate for the directional light produced by LED light bulbs. LED’s can be aimed. They emit the vast majority of the light they produce in the direction the are pointed. Since this fixture ‘aims’ the light down, LED lights work quite well with this fixture to illuminate the ground beneath them (which is where you need the light in the first place). They’ll also cooperate in efforts to reduce light spill into areas that should not be lit (like the night sky or your neighbor’s bedroom).
Modern living has some new requirements that earlier generations rarely if ever had to think of. Energy efficient light bulbs are an easy to meet some of these new ‘lifestyle guidelines’. These will consume far less energy thereby generating far less global warming / green house gases. They’ll also save you a considerable sum of money over their life spans. Energy efficient is typically a win-win situation.

Almost one-fourth of the energy used in homes is used for lighting. Unfortunately, most homes still use the traditional incandescent light bulbs invented by Thomas Edison over 100 years ago! These bulbs convert only about 10 percent of the electricity they use to produce light, the other 90 percent is converted into heat. With new technologies, such as better filament designs and gas mixtures, incandescent bulbs are slightly more efficient than they used to be. In 1879, the average bulb produced only 14 lumens per watt, compared to about 17 lumens per watt today. By adding halogen gases, the efficiency can be increased to 20 lumens per watt. Compact fluorescent light bulbs, or “CFLs”, have made inroads into home lighting systems in the last few years. These bulbs are more expensive to purchase, but last much longer and use much less energy, producing significant savings over the life of the bulb. Compact fluorescent bulbs are over 4 times as efficient as incandescent. For example, a 40 watt incandescent bulb would typically be replaced by a 9 watt compact fluorescent. Compact fluorescent bulbs are not without their own issues, however. The primary drawback of CFL’s is the fact that they contain mercury in them. Break one of these inside your home and you’ll need to have a haz-mat team come in an clean up the mess. Also, while they’re some 4x more efficient than incandescent light bulbs, they’re no where near the top of the heap as far as energy efficiency goes. So, what is the most energy efficient light bulb available for your home? Simple, LED light bulbs.

LED light bulbs are are watt for watt the most energy efficient light bulbs your can purchase for your home. Throw in the fact that they last for 50,000 - 100,000 hours of operation, and changing light bulbs may become a thing of the past. As an example, if you left LED lights on for 12 hours per day, they’d typically last for 25-30 years before they burned out. Most people don’t own their homes that long, so put in a set of these and you might never change them again. Also, as this post is about energy efficiency, LED’s put out an incredible amount of light while using a minuscule amount of energy. LED’s are more than twice as efficient as compact fluorescents and about 10x as energy efficient as incandescent light bulbs. As we try to reduce our production of global warming green house gases, we need to look for the simple things that we can do in our everyday living that can have the biggest effects. Switching to LED light bulbs can cut your home lighting energy use by almost 90%. This is a substantial savings in both money and green house gas emissions.

LED’s aren’t for all types of applications. They are directional lights. ie… they shine in the direction they are pointed in. They don’t shine in all directions as typical incandescent light bulbs do. LED light bulbs are appropriate when you need powerful directional lighting. Presently, LED excels over other bulbs in spot and flood lighting applications. Track lighting, spot lighting, canister lights, and outdoor flood lights are currently the most appropriate places to use LED bulbs. At the moment, if you need general radiant illumination, use energy saving compact fluorescent (CFL) bulbs…but stay tuned for LED replacements of CFLs in the very near future!

LED light bulbs are not currently Energy Star Certified. This will likely change in the not too distant future as these lamps are even more efficient than the current energy star sweet heart, compact fluorescent light bulbs. Look for Starry Night Lights to dramatically expand its energy efficient lighting offerings. This will include both compact fluorescent and LED light bulbs.