Heat lamps are generally available in three varieties; red, blue or in frosted white. A red heat lamp typically emits a warm orange glow on the subject of the bulb that it’s illuminating; imagine that! And a blue heat lamp produces a soft, soothing color, perfect for relaxing in the bath or doing your nails.

Have you ever used a heat lamp? They’re incredibly soothing. Very few things can get me in a good mood more than a lovely heat lamp. And even if I’m not feeling moody, I certainly do enjoy looking into a pretty heat lamp when I’m working in the bathroom. But what is a heat lamp? What exactly is an infrared heat lamp and what can it do for my home?

The amount of heat emitted by each light bulb varies; some are much more efficient than others. Obviously, the more efficient the bulbs, the less heat they put out. I don’t know about you, but I find that a fifty-watt incandescent bulb is way too much heat for my lamp. But it does put out enough light to brighten up my work area, and I can’t use the lamp much because I’m working with a substrate and a Styrofoam cup. Not very practical.

There are other options available to me in my quest to warm up my home, including solar powered heat lamps. The only thing that really bothered me about them was that I couldn’t move them around. And installing a solar-powered version of any type of basking lamp is very costly. For the price I paid for my original one, I could buy two or three more.

Since the installation cost is so much, I finally decided to buy a heat lamp that comes with an adaptor so I could move it around easier. I bought one with the replaceable glass bulb cover. It came with the adaptor already attached and all I did was stick it onto the existing bulb cover. Installing heat lamps may seem like a lot of work, but I’ve learned over the years that it’s usually much less difficult than it appears to be.

You can find heat lamps with incandescent bulb covers at most stores that sell home improvement items, like Home Depot. There are also plenty of manufacturers of compact fluorescent light bulbs, or CFLs, including Phillips, Halogen, and Osram. These manufacturers produce high quality lights that are very efficient. The cost savings from using CFLs over incandescent lamps to heat your home are fairly substantial. You might even consider buying a few to place in different rooms.

If you’re looking for a new heat lamp to replace old, inefficient one, consider the efficiency rating of the bulbs that are used in the lamps. CFLs produce heat that is about sixty percent more efficient than incandescent bulbs. You can even find heat lamps that have triple that efficiency. If you use a bulb that has a triple A rating, you’ll definitely get much more warmth from it than you would from a bulb with a six A rating.

If you use a heat lamp with a triple A rating, then the lamp you purchase will have a life expectancy of about twenty thousand hours. If you want to extend that lifespan, then you should purchase a lamp that offers a high quality warranty with it. That way, if you end up with a poorly-made lamp, you won’t have to pay too much to replace it. Just keep in mind that you’ll need to purchase a new outdoor light fixture with a fifty-watt bulb. Otherwise, the warranty won’t cover the replacement costs of the bulb.