What Is A 15 Watt Type B Bulb?
Light bulbs are not "one size fits all." There are several shapes, sizes, transparencies and colors of bulbs on the market. They come in varying degrees of wattages and brightness, and each bulb is made to suit a different area of the home. Color temperature is also a factor in purchasing bulbs, ranging from "warm" to "cool." Light from traditional incandescent bulbs appears yellow-tinted – or warmer – while cooler, more modern lights have a bluer tone.
Light Bulb Types and Labeling
An alphabetic character, or characters, followed by a number and an optional alphabetic character reveals a light bulb's specifics. The first letter identifies the bulb shape, the following number measures its diameter and the optional letter tells the overall length of the object. This information, along with the bulb's wattage, usually appears on the outside of a light bulb's packaging. There are about 20 shape designations for light bulbs. Of that number, the most commonly used are A, B, C and PAR bulbs.
What Type B Bulbs Look Like
Sometimes known as "candelabra bulbs," Type B bulbs are bullet or flame-shaped, smaller in size and carry less wattage than other bulbs. Some Type B bulbs buldge at the base and get thinner as they reach the tip, while others retain the same narrow shape from bottom to top. Type B bulbs are mostly decorative and are usually not the primary source of lighting in a room.
The Energy Used & Light Emitted by a 15-Watt Type B Bulb
With the introduction of more energy-efficient LED and compact fluorescent (CFL) bulbs in recent years, incandescent bulbs, while still popular, are becoming obsolete – and their wattage ratings equally so. Incandescent bulbs also have a shorter lifespan of about one year than do their CFL and LED counterparts, which can last for about a decade.
When incandescent bulbs were the only bulb on the market, consumers believed the more wattage a bulb had, the more light it emitted. This was mostly the case, as the differences in incandescent bulbs were easy to see.
A 15-watt Type B incandescent bulb does not use a lot of energy, nor does it emit a lot of light as far as incandescent bulbs go, hence its decorative and secondary uses. In comparison to its CFL and LED counterparts, however, it does use more energy. Wattage is also no longer a real indication of how much light a bulb gives off, as CFL and LED bulbs user even fewer watts, and overall energy, to create the same amount of light.