The standard light bulb's glow is about to fade.
Starting Wednesday, new federal standards will forbid the manufacture or import of the familiar, teardrop-shaped 40- and 60- watt incandescent bulbs that have been illuminating American homes for decades.
The bulbs will stay on store shelves until supplies dwindle, but ultimately, customers will be forced to choose a new way to light their dwellings. The choices are all more expensive - though they save electricity - and will require some understanding of labels to get light comparable to what customers are used to.
Some are raging at the dying of the incandescent light.
"They've been buying up the last of the incandescents," Joe Kotter, who works in the electrical department at Pembroke Hardware, said of customers. "People are reluctant to use the new ones because of the price. They don't care that it'll last 10 times longer."
Certain incandescent bulbs will remain available, such as three-way bulbs, 150-watt bulbs and bulbs with narrow, candelabra-style bases. Still, some conservatives have decried the new rules, part of the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, as needless government intrusion. Environmental advocates have praised the move toward more energy efficiency.
Either way, change is coming.
From now on, choosing a bulb will involve understanding the rating scales involved. Lumens, for example, measure a bulb's brightness, with 450 lumens being roughly equivalent to an old 40-watt bulb. A Kelvin measures the color of the light. The higher the Kelvin number, the cooler and whiter the light appears.
Incandescent bulbs were cheap and bright but notoriously inefficient, wasting most of their energy generating heat rather than light. For now, the most widely available alternative is the compact fluorescent (CFL) bulb, recognizable for its distinctive spiral design. CFLs have been criticized for containing a tiny amount of mercury, for providing dull light and taking too long to reach full brightness.
But the technology is improving, and they are far more efficient and long-lasting than incandescent bulbs.
"I feel like I get more use out of the new ones," said Timothy Gallant, sales manager at Massey Hill Hardware on Southern Avenue.
It doesn't take much, though, to knock a CFL out of commission.
"The slightest touch," Gallant said, "and poof - that's it."
Halogen bulbs are the cheapest alternative to the incandescent version, but they don't save much electricity, even though they are at least twice the price of the old bulbs. Halogen bulbs are expected to become more efficient and longer-lasting, but the future appears to be lit by LED bulbs - light-emitting diodes. They're already popular in the distinctive stop lights that feature lots of tiny dots of color. They can last for decades and use very little energy, but they remain expensive.
At Pembroke Hardware, Kotter said he expects CFL bulbs to eventually fall by the wayside.
"They'll be gone, and LED will be in, and they'll outlast everything," Kotter said. "That's the next thing. They're not all that popular yet, but they will be."