The question comes from hearing that anything with fluorescent tubes is industrial lighting and not suitable for residential lighting. Is this true? I'm not talking about fluorescent fixtures marketed as industrial, but regular ones. I am also excluding CFLs.

According to me that is nonsense.
But it is all about the fact, there are no well designed decorative fixtures for the fluorescents, even when in many cases the naked fluorescent could be kept visible as a main part of the fixture (e.g. circlines, or even some triangular fixtures like the one recently published by someone here). But that I feel as a kind of "chicken-egg" problem, but that time we have no "chicken", nor "egg": People do not want fluorescents, because there are no fiixtures on the market. No one offers fixtures, because people do not use it, so the sale would not be that big...
And quite a significant factor is the cost: Incandescent fixture is extremely simple, just sockets and that it is all. With fluorescents you have to take care of the ballast all the auxiliary, which adds to the cost, so a fluorescent fixture will be always more expensive than the incandescent. And people are in that area rather dumb and pick what is the cheapest on the shelf, not counting they then pay much more during the operation. But still no government should interfere in any way - the only cure is to let them learn it the hard way on their own, the "regulatory guidance" the greenbrainers are enforcing makes that matter only worse...

On the other hand the power levels, where the fluorescents reach the peak efficacy (judging different types sorted by the rated power) means rather high lumen packages (100lm/W models start around 1500lm, with incandecents that is the strongest lamp really used in homes, most others are in the 400 to 900lm range and there most of the the fluorescents have no more than 70lm/W), which is too much for many home applications. This became really evident when the LED's arrived - at the low packages the LED's were quite easily more efficient than fluorescents.

But the lamp efficacy alone is not everything. There are many fixtures with tubular shaped diffusers, where you can feel the designers put all effort to distribute the light from the rather point source incandescents along the tube length. There I really do not understand, why the heck they haven't chosen the fluorescent in the first place

Why it is assumed that "industrial" stuff is inappropriate for home ? Is everything at home absolutely required to be not "simply functional" ?

That appears to differ between people's views

Some are fine with everything that does its job well

Some want every thing to be "decorated", and we allready talked about that in the discussion with the European design switches made to hide the mounting screws



In addition, how much "design" it takes to put the lantern apart from "industrial" ?

Over here many peeps do use fairly basic Fluorescents in home use, including living rooms. One of the lanterns that was very common in the 90s are a design called "snow pack" or "ice pack" for the texture of the cover :



There is also the answer to the cost question. Those snow pacs were some of the cheapest Fluorescent lanterns made here, with just a sheet metal tray, basic Switchstart circuit screwed to it with self tappers, and vacuum formed cover out of a prismatic PMMA sheet

And if thats not enough, those were allmost allways fitted with Daylight 6500K tubes



Another design that comes to mind is the Gaash 4400/2000 from the end of the 70s / throughout the 80s :



Its not really much more than a plain Fluorescent strip, but still with some streamlined design, not plain box with tombstone sockets like the real industrials are. In addition, those were made also in Rapid Start and Perfect Start options to eliminate flickery startup, and attached diffuser box option

There was also a later version with white insert/turn sockets made up to about mid 90s

How about this for home use ?



Hanging Incandescent on wires from the ceiling is not industrial by any means (you won't see such thing in industrial settings due to safety and efficiency). Is that appropriate for home use or not ?

Around here, in the 90s it was failrly normal that most lighting in the rooms of a home is hanging Incandescents, and i can imagine no less in years before (in which i was not around to check). Now it is way more rare - Peeps do install something more advanced in all rooms



36W lamps with 2500Lm for 1 lamp (the usual Daylight 6500K) is sorta too much for homes - that depends who you ask. There are many peeps here that have 4 36W's brightly lighting up their living room and 2x36 in bedroom. On the other hand there is me with 1x11W PL-S as the bedroom ceiling light

As far as efficiency goes, everything above 50 Lm/W is equally efficient for residential use. Based on my 11W PL-S example : There is difference between 75W (Incandescent) and 15W (equivalent CFL or 11W PL-S with ballast losses counted in), but absolutely no difference between 15W and 10W (some LED) : 15W by itself is too low wattage to have any significant effect on the electrical bill or room temperature, so from the user's point of view, there is no interest to bother saving any further anyway

And that is what surprise me : PL and 2D were here since the 80s, yet had quite limited success, while they were promising technologies in the day, and even today surpass the LEDs in light quality

Well, two problems:
1. They want to put this in a laundry room.
2. They usually like high brightness, but at soft white, so 12000 Lumens at 2700K in a living room.
3. They also consider yardblasters and fluorescent troffers commercial-industrial lighting, and too ugly for home use.

Well, I could not imagine 12klm for a room with just 2700K CCT, according to me that will be too yellow in such high power levels.
In literature is published a graph depicting the optimum CCT range for a given illumination level and what I could feel myself, it really matches well.
At low levels, similar to homes, the recommended range is about 2400 till 4000K (so the 2700K is color wise in the middle), while on high levels approaching the daylight the optimum range shifts to about 4000K till 6500K range (the 5000K is there about in the middle). Light close to the lower end appears too yellow, to the higher end too bluish.

The thing with the decorative functionality was pintting out the difference in the fixture types availability for incandescents vs fluorescents. It is true, in many places many people end up with just a naked incanedscent hanging from the ceiling, but many people like the fixtures to act as a kind of decoration. From what was offered in the 50's and maybe 60's (when the fluorescents were still mainly a high tech gadget), quite some really ornamental fixtures were designed specifically for fluorescents. And form that I really have an impression the fluorescent is way more suitable format to work with to form some decorative thing than the incandescents, but it could be the rather low fluorescent light quality in the 50's, what formed the belief the fluorescents are "just worklights and not for leisure". And later even when the light quality had dramatically improved, that reputation persisted.
It is shame the hgreenbrainers have pushed through the questionable incandescent retrofits, instead of proper fixtures (which used to consume about 20..30% less power for the same output and same year).
I really do think the fluorescents have really a greater potential for nice looking fixtures, mainly when operated underdriven (the T8 or so; so they are not that bright; the concept, what the NPF "home grade" F40 ballasts operating the lamps at just around 25W were for in the US).

And yes, if you design the room well, even a simple, basic fixture may look great...

Well, I could not imagine 12klm for a room with just 2700K CCT, according to me that will be too yellow in such high power levels.
In literature is published a graph depicting the optimum CCT range for a given illumination level and what I could feel myself, it really matches well.
At low levels, similar to homes, the recommended range is about 2400 till 4000K (so the 2700K is color wise in the middle), while on high levels approaching the daylight the optimum range shifts to about 4000K till 6500K range (the 5000K is there about in the middle). Light close to the lower end appears too yellow, to the higher end too bluish.

The thing with the decorative functionality was pintting out the difference in the fixture types availability for incandescents vs fluorescents. It is true, in many places many people end up with just a naked incanedscent hanging from the ceiling, but many people like the fixtures to act as a kind of decoration. From what was offered in the 50's and maybe 60's (when the fluorescents were still mainly a high tech gadget), quite some really ornamental fixtures were designed specifically for fluorescents. And form that I really have an impression the fluorescent is way more suitable format to work with to form some decorative thing than the incandescents, but it could be the rather low fluorescent light quality in the 50's, what formed the belief the fluorescents are "just worklights and not for leisure". And later even when the light quality had dramatically improved, that reputation persisted.
It is shame the hgreenbrainers have pushed through the questionable incandescent retrofits, instead of proper fixtures (which used to consume about 20..30% less power for the same output and same year).
I really do think the fluorescents have really a greater potential for nice looking fixtures, mainly when operated underdriven (the T8 or so; so they are not that bright; the concept, what the NPF "home grade" F40 ballasts operating the lamps at just around 25W were for in the US).

And yes, if you design the room well, even a simple, basic fixture may look great...

Well, I guess daylight colors would be good for the lumen level, and I even measured the bathroom we're remodeling with the current lighting, and I concluded that we should have 4000K bulbs rather than 3000K.
And the same people don't like fluorescents because of the flickering and bad light quality.
And how could convince them that yardblasters aren't commerical-industrial lighting?

The relative success of Fluorescents at homes over here in the 80s..90s can be attributed to quite a lot of stuff :

 - The white light (6500K) is preferred by many, including at home and including for small applications too (so bed rooms, ..)

 - Little added heat to the room vs. Incandescents

 - Not ornamental stuff being considered normal. Same for Incandescent lanterns. Some designs of Fluorescents were made to be "a little more than plain Industrial tubes", such as the Snow packs (picture above) while still being along the lines of simple and functional

 - Fluorescents started appearing here in the 60s as part of big public buildings, and only in the 70s made it into widespread public use, mostly with USA made lamps like Westys and Sylvania Lifelines, that were allready fairly advanced. So basically, people here did not encounter the older Fluorescents

 - As Fluorescents caught on, Eltam - the biggest manufacturer of ballasts here (now part of Voslloh Schwabe) introduced new generation of ballasts that were silent (unlike the old ones), and there was massive push to move from Switch Start to Perfect Start - Relay controlled lamp starting without flicker. In places that were built in the early 80s Perfect Start was often used everywhere, allthough more expensive than Switch Start. So this helped to make Fluorescent lighting a good impression, allthough the home users actually stayed with the cheaper options (Switch Start)

 - "Believing" Jewish religious people dont switch on or off electricity in saturdays, and leaving lights on for whole day long is big impact on the electrical bill. In the 90s/2000s (before the "retrofit lamps" boom) virtually all of those families had Fluorescents in the living room and other common rooms of the house, so all the places where the lights stay on for the weekend



Over time peeps started wanting "everything ornamental" here, and i can list many other house hardware :

Incandescent lanterns for "laundry room" applications :
 - In the past there was big selection of strictly functional design lanterns of various designs, made of various materials - Metal and Carbolite most commonly

 - Now even the cheapest lanterns are ornamental. That is, they are rated IP54 or IP67, they cost the same as the old ones, but instead of tough lantern of simple geometric shape with black Carbolite top, there is an ornamental design made of some thin white Polycarbonate that breaks if you overdo the mounting screws alittle..

Switches and receptacles - See the discussion we had

Bathroom devices :
 - From simple water taps with turn handle and replaceble gaskets, its now ornamental water taps, most of them ceramic cartridge mechanism. It came to the point that you can't get the old ones anymore. In my home i installed actual ball valve (so really industrial) taps to replace old worn out ones, because there is nothing inbetween (like the old ones) on the market. Though i must say i really like the ball valve taps

 - Simple rectangular water sink, but still made of Porcelain, is a thing of the past. There are only the ornamental Porcelain ones, or you can get an actual industrial stainless steel basin

 - Simple bathtub pressed from sheet metal and enamelled ? forget it

Floor tiles :
 - In the past we had mostly Terrazzo tiles (see in the pic of the Fluorescents above). Those are tough tiles about an inch thick, half of that is the top layer, half is a concrete backing. If you drop a tool on this tile usually nothing happens, or if you drop a hammer you will chip it a bit in the place of impact

 - Today you can get porcelain glazed tiles, that look more stylish, but if you drop a tool on one it shatters. The benefit of those tiles is that they are way more chemically resistant : They dont discolor from exposure to acids (food spills not cleaned up promptly, ..)

So each type got its pro's and con's, and choice would be good there. But in reality one type pushed the other entirely out..

Speaking of those porcelain tiles, in the early 2000s there was an accident in a firearms store in the center of the country : A customer had a negligent discharge in the shop, with the barrel pointed to the floor. The reflected bullet did not hit anyone, but the tile it hit exploded into sharpnel that popped out of the floor and injured 2 other people with injuries that required evacuation to hospital. Not really a consideration when choosing tiles for home, but gets to show the properties of the material



About the water taps, i had some time ago a private discussion with an LG member from UK. It appears that there "ordinary stuff" is considered normal even today (for example, they are starting to get over the separate hot and cold water taps, but for either option, if you want plain you get plain). Same for switches and sockets

Here - Israel, throught the late 90s or so everything changed direction to the reverse - From a hardware landscape of simple functional stuff (of top quality may i add) up to about mid 90s, we turned into a place where for many things you cant get at all something that is not ornamental in the 2000s



The same people who dont like Fluorescents for their light quality, often dont like it entirely psychologically :

 - Dont like linears but no problem with CFLs

 - Dont like spiral CFLs but no problem with CFLs that have outer globe

Finally, there come the LEDs that have much worse light quality, but unlike Fluorescents, have very well formed marketing. As we see, people buy to marketing and not to actual performance



And why you need to convince anyone that yardblasters are not industrial ?

For all i care, they can hang that same crystal chandelier as security light, under their roof's canopy. In the 1.5KW power / $12000 version, so that it gets about the same light output as 150W HPS bucket

I have to convince then so I can install one, they think they are ugly industrial lighting not for for anything remotely residential.

Are they = your parents ?

Are they = your parents ?

Could be, but it could also be a picky HOA group. (Home Owners Association, they essentially make rules for what you can put on houses, like only using Carrier air conditioners)
I want to give yardblasters a better general reputation around here.

With such organizations in the "lamd of the free" ?

Dude move to USSR

Anywhere but there.
And the HOA tells you what fence you can use, what types of grill, but there are some neighborhoods with no HOA.

Organizations that dicatate what brand air conditioning unit you can install on your house CANNOT be talked to with ANY rational reasonings. You are going to be talking to walls

Grow up and move the hell out of any housing estate controlled by such organization. If you want to experience any of your freedoms over the construction/equipment of your own house, then the bucket light will be by far not the last of your encounters with their limiting rules

Organizations that dicatate what brand air conditioning unit you can install on your house CANNOT be talked to with ANY rational reasonings. You are going to be talking to walls

Grow up and move the (...) out of any housing estate controlled by such organization. If you want to experience any of your freedoms over the construction/equipment of your own house, then the bucket light will be by far not the last of your encounters with their limiting rules

Another problem, We live in one of the many Historic Districts in Florida, which means we have to get a permit and permission from them when we want to do something to our house.

Then if you want to install anything that does not look like a gas lantern, either install it on a protable pole, or move out

I still dont get why a Carrier air condition unit is more "historic" than other brand. And same for the BBQs (does anyone even see the BBQ without specifically peeking in through the fence ?)

Then if you want to install anything that does not look like a gas lantern, either install it on a protable pole, or move out

I still dont get why a Carrier air condition unit is more "historic" than other brand. And same for the BBQs (does anyone even see the BBQ without specifically peeking in through the fence ?)

Well, there are actually reasons for those; Where Carrier is specified, it is usually apartments that are not in historic districts, and you can only use electric grills in the Cocoa Beach condos because the gas ones may cause a fire.
We don't happen to have our air conditioner specified, that's a good thing.