After years of using fluorescent garage lights people are finally getting on to the fact that these cheap and affordable tubes of plasma are actually worth a lot more than most people are paying for them. Unlike traditional filament light bulbs fluorescent tubes light up because the gas inside it is being turned into plasma which is in turn generating light. This process requires that an electrical field is passed through the gas. Fortunately this doesn’t require a huge amount of electricity to run so we come to extra benefit number 1 which is power saving. In this day and age where people are now conscious of their carbon footprint, it is now trendy to use fluorescent lighting for the lights you’re going to leave on all night anyway, instead of just the financial sense that it made to all those other people before this.

Fluorescent lighting is also significantly easier to make and run than other lighting and this isn’t just restricted to the fluorescent tube itself. The actual construction of most basic fluorescent tube housing is fairly modular since the tube won’t start up without the starter which is also very inexpensive in itself. This modular design means that there’s less wear and tear on the overall structure and since both the tube and starter are inexpensive, it makes long term financial sense to install fluorescent tube lighting for your lights and other 24/7 installations than traditional incandescent lighting.

The other thing that most people will notice about fluorescent lighting besides the usually white light it gives off is that the light itself is not hot. Traditional incandescent lighting gives off light because the light bulb itself is hot, generating light which usually heats up the air inside a room. Fluorescent lighting on the other hand is basically plasma generated light. This is significantly less hot than traditional incandescent lighting. Granted the tube and starter do become hot, but this is more due to the nature of electricity passing through conductive material than the lighting method itself.

While this does make fluorescent lighting great as garage lights when you’re dealing with something heat sensitive like wax or ice it makes very inefficient heaters or dryers. This means that while incandescent lighting is less energy efficient and gives off heat it is also imminently better than fluorescent lighting for situations like drying paint or keeping pets warm where the application of direct heat isn’t such a good idea. Please don’t even think about the microwave at this point as everyone should by know that the urban legend of putting your cat into the microwave to dry it is definitely not a good idea.