Articles Portal!

When selected properly, a book light can reduce eye fatigue by providing excellent lighting while reading, even in darkened venues, and can help to save both energy and money. A well designed clip on book light design can make your light easy to attach to your book, book holder, or book stand, and many do double duty as craft, podium, hobby or other task lighting. Light weight incandescent or LED designs can put just the right lighting exactly where you need it, without wasting energy or disturbing others around you, like a spouse or partner on the other side of the bed.

By lighting your reading materials with just the right amount and temperature of light, a book light can help to save your eyes from strain and assist your reading in darkened venues. Our eyes require more light as we age, and providing the right amount of light exactly where we’re reading can be a real challenge. Obviously, the most perfect light for reading is natural sunlight shining directly over your shoulder, but we often wish to read when or where such lighting isn’t available. Hence, the right book light, one we can use anywhere and anytime we choose, iscan be} an incredible convenience. By then turning off the overheads and lamps lighting things other than our reading, we save considerable energy as well as the money it takes to pay for it.

When making the choice between incandescent and LED designs, three primary concerns are: the different color or temperature of light produced by these two technologies, the cost of original purchase, and the cost of operation over the lifetime of the light. Incandescent light sources typically create a warm, somewhat golden-tinged light, and bulbs typically will provide light between 15-25 hours of use and then have to be replaced. LED lights create a whiter, cooler light, and many designs are now optimized to approximate the output of lighting from the sun. Today, many book lovers find the light of modern LED designs to be more “sun like”, producing greater clarity and contrast and making most printing easier to read. While replacement bulbs for many incandescent book light designs are readily available in local electrical and hardware stores, as well as over the Internet, the expense and inconvenience of replacement can really add up over time. Since LEDs offer life expectancies of 10,000 to 50,000 hours, their 10-20% greater initial purchase price quickly becomes irrelevant. For these and other reasons, LED lights are now the preferred choice over the older incandescent.

Battery powered book light designs are the handiest, because your light can be used anywhere. Unfortunately, batteries themselves are also a an item that must be replaced, typically lasting 20-30 hours of use at best, in LED or incandescent designs. Available A/C adapters are offered for most book lights, and another possibility is to use rechargeable batteries and a recharger. Most book lights use either AA or AAA batteries, and many rechargeable options exist. In addition, if your light is typically used close to an A/C outlet, an optionally available A/C adapter is usually a worthwhile investment.

Finally, the area over which the light is dispersed is also a consideration when choosing the perfect book light for a particular application. If your light is only to be used to light up a standard mass market paperback book, a single LED or incandescent clip on light design will likely be adequate; but, if you read magazines, most hard cover books or a stand full of music, you’ll need a more powerful design which can distribute the lighting over an appropriately larger area. The best way to determine the most perfect light for your particular application will be to test it in actual use. When shopping, make sure your dealer provides both good information and advice before the sale, and a good return policy, in case your first choice turns out not to be as suitable as you had hoped. With a bit of application, you can acquire the best light for each and every use.

Filed under: General Interest