Sustainable Building Forum

My husband and I have been slowly converting our incandescent light bulbs to LEED-standard CFLs, but we are concerned about the effect they might have on some of our guests. Some of our friends suffer from fluorescent-induced migraine headaches and have complained about the flickering of our front porch lights (which is, to me at least, unnoticeable.)

At the moment we're just replacing the lights that guests are unlikely to have to see (closets, private rooms, etc.) but eventually we'd like to spread them all through our house. We'd just like to do it without, you know, physically harming our guests.

Does anyone know of a way to combat this problem?

We've actually had the same problem since Liz suffers from migraines induced the same way.  We loaded up on CFL's to replace all our existing incandescent bulbs but found we had to roll back to incandescent in fixtures where the bulb itself is visible.  Shielding through a shade or glass globe seems to eliminate the issue for us - but unfortunately not all our fixtures are configured that way.

Something to keep in mind when you choose new light fixtures.