Properly selected, a book light can reduce eye stress by providing excellent lighting while reading, even in the darkest places, and can help to save both energy and money. A well designed clip on book light design can make your light easy to affix to your book, book holder, or book stand, and many designs can do double duty as hobby, craft, podium or task lights. Light weight incandescent or LED designs can put just the right lighting anywhere you need it, without wasting energy or disturbing others around you, like a spouse or partner watching TV.
By illuminating your reading materials with the right quantity and color of light, the right book light can save your eyes from strain and assist your reading in darkened venues. Our eyes require more light as we age, and providing the correct amount of light exactly where we’re reading can be difficult. Obviously, the best light for reading is natural sunlight coming directly over your shoulder, but we often need to read when or where such lighting simply isn’t available. Hence, the correctly selected book light, a light we can use anywhere and anytime we choose, iscan be} an incredible convenience. Then, turning off the overheads and other lighting illuminating so much more than our reading materials, we can save considerable energy and the money required to pay for that energy.
When making the choice between incandescent and LED book light designs, three primary considerations include: the different color or temperature of light produced by these two distinct technologies, the cost of acquisition, and the cost of maintenance and operation over the lifetime of the light. Incandescent lights typically produce a warm, somewhat yellowish or golden-tinged light, and incandescent bulbs typically have service lives of between 15-25 hours of use and then must be replaced. LED lights produce a whiter, cooler light, with many designs now optimized to be the equivalent of the output of lighting from the sun. Today, most book lovers find the light of modern LEDs to be more “sun like”, producing greater clarity and contrast and making all 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 mount 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 more popular than the older incandescent.
Battery powered clip on lights are the handiest, as your light can be used anywhere. Unfortunately, batteries too are 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, but another possibility is to make use of a good battery recharger and rechargeable batteries. Most book lights make use of either AA or AAA batteries, and many excellent models are available from which to choose. Additionally, if your light is typically used close to an A/C outlet, an optionally available A/C adapter can be a worthwhile investment.
Finally, the area over which the light is dispersed is also an important consideration when choosing the right book light for a particular application. If your light is only to be used to illuminate a standard size, mass market paperback, a single LED or incandescent portable design will probably be sufficient; however, if you read mostly hard cover books, newspapers and magazines, or even a full music stand of sheet music, you’ll need a much more powerful design that can distribute the light over a much broader area. The best way to determine the most suitable light for any particular application will be to test it in actual use. When shopping, make sure your dealer provides both good pre-sale and return service, just in case your first choice doesn’t quite hit the mark. With diligence, you can find the perfect light for each and every use.
