Easy Thinking

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

By illuminating your reading materials with the correct amount and temperature 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 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 need to read when or where such lighting isn’t available. Hence, the right book light, a light we can use any time and any place we choose, iscan be} an incredible convenience. Then, turning off the overheads and lamps illuminating so much more than our reading materials, we can save considerable energy and the money required to pay for it.

When choosing between incandescent and LED designs, three primary considerations are: the different color or temperature of light produced by these two technologies, the cost of original purchase, and the cost of maintenance and operation over the lifetime of the light. Incandescent lights typically produce a warm, somewhat yellowish light, and incandescent bulbs typically last between 15-25 hours of use and then must 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 readers find the light of modern LEDs 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 generally available in local electronic retail shops, and over the Internet, the expense and inconvenience of replacement can really mount up over time. Because LEDs provide 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 book lights are now the preferred choice over the older incandescent.

Battery powered book light designs are the handiest, because your light can be used almost anywhere. Unfortunately, batteries too are a an item that must be replaced, typically lasting only 20-30 hours of use at best, in LED or incandescent designs. Available A/C adapters are available for most book lights, but another possibility is to use a good battery recharger and rechargeable batteries. Most book light designs make use of either AA or AAA batteries, and many rechargeable options are on offer. Additionally, if your light is to be used near to an electrical outlet, an optional A/C adapter can be a money saving investment.

Finally, the area over which the light is dispersed is also a meaningful consideration when identifying the right book light for a particular application. If your light is only to be used to light a standard size, mass market paperback, a single LED or incandescent clip on light design will probably be sufficient; however, if you read magazines, most hard cover books or a stand full of music, you’ll want a much more powerful light which can distribute the light over a much broader area. The ideal way to determine the most perfect light for your particular application will be to test it in actual use. Wherever you shop, be sure your retailer provides both good information and advice before the sale, and a good return policy, just in case your first choice turns out not to be as suitable as you had hoped. With a bit of application, you can find the perfect light for each and every use.