The re-appearance of this thread reminds me that I must go out and stock up on proper bulbs before the manufacturing ban /whatever extends on from the 100W bulbs to the lower rated ones.
As a result I'm now sitting in too much light*
If you want mood lighting, get mood lighting. Put a standard lamp or table lamp in a corner, switch that on and the main lamps out. Simples.
...
Last night I was at my parents, who do have "mood lighting".
At home we have one central ceiling light, which looks great and takes 6 bulbs - we use 25W candle bulbs. This gives us a range of between 0 and 150W. It lights the room perfectly at all brightnesses as the lamp is in the centre of the ceiling.
At my parents they turned out the feeble power saving laugh, and instead put on the table lamps for "mood lighting". Because these are in the corners of the room, and have shades (who wants to look at a naked bulb?) they are quite dim (albeit a pretty colour). As a result the room was very dark, with some bright patches, but the overall power consumption was much higher than our single dimmed light at home.
This is the exact reason we no longer use these standard lamps at home. I worked out once that in order to have a dimly lit room we had over 100W worth of table lamps powered up, and additional candles, all to just supplement the light being thrown out from the telly. Instead it is so much easier to just take the single central light (which in our case is max 150W split across six bulbs) and adjust it down to the brightness required.