Halogen bulb vs. compact flourescent

[Jeremy]

I am already starting to prepare for the winter gloom, and the biggest problem for me is light. It turns out that I need to supplement light during the winter. I don't know what bulb to use. The 900 lumen, 60 W halogen bulb emits more blue light than regular incandescent. Or the 1600 lumen, 26 W compact daylight flourescent emits red, green, blue, and purple light. I tested them both out with a light meter, and the halogen bulb emits a maximum of 5000 foot candles while the CFL emits a maximum of 3000 foot candles and for the CFL the intensity drops rapidly after few inches (intensity drops to 300 fc.) from the bulb while the halogen bulb keeps its intensity (or drops slowly) even farther from bulb ( has intensity around 1500 fc. from the same distance measured for the CFL). Which bulb should I use?

[dennis]

a halogen puts out in the neighborhood of 3000k on the spectrum chart a incandescent is around 2700k a little more on the yellow side the biggest drawback to halogen is the heat. the best for your dollar is metal halide which has a efficency of 80 to 120 lumens per watt and use 2 to 20 times less power over other light sources. sodium vapor is the highest in efficency getting 95 to 150 lumens per watt they put out more light than the mh but the spectrum is severly shifted to the red end on the spectrum chart. spectrum is secondary to the light intensity in what you need