When we moved into our home over five years ago, we found that we could barely see in our master bedroom closet. The light was so dim that I had to bring garments out of the closet to tell if they were navy or black. One day, I may have even put on two different shoes. And don’t even get me started on how it effected my color blind husband.
The first thing that would pop into most people’s heads would be to replace the light fixtures so that we could use a higher wattage of bulbs, right? Yeah, we thought that too. We even bought several can lights that Tom was going to install, but it never happened. Ahem. ::sideways glance at Tom::
Well, one of the bulbs in those old fixtures finally burned out a few weeks ago. When I opened the fixture to remove the bulb that had burned out, I found that it looked like this:
What in the world? This was originally a soft white bulb, but now it looks marbled.
Do any of you know what causes a marbled light bulb? I’ve googled every which way I can think of, but I’ve come up with nothing. Do you think there’s something wrong with my light fixture or was this maybe a defective bulb (that lasted over 5 years)? Or something else scary? Or just something cool?
What say you, my friends? This Nancy Drew wants to know.
PS – Are you a Nancy Drew fan? Check out my Nancy Drew themed no soliciting sign by my front door.
My non-technical opinion is the swirls are smoke stains from the lightbulb burning out. I totally made that up! I have just purchased daylight LED light bulbs and absolutely LOVE them they are bright and if you get the ones that say “daylight” they are very bright! Best wishes
It looks to me like the bulb developed an air leak.
The marbled look is really the smoke on the glass as the filament burned out.
Hi, I shared this post on FB to ask some lighting experts what could cause that.
Two of them said that the marbling is caused by leftover smoke from the filament in the light bulb burning out. Mystery solved!
I just had a defective bulb the other day do this. It was a cheap pack (Home brand I think) from Menard’s. After putting it in the lamp it blinked, smoked, & as soon as I took it out it looked like yours. That doesn’t offer much help, but mine was the bulb itself.
What makes the lightbulb white is powder coating the inside of the bulb. The brown swirls are probably when the filament blew up and pushed the white powder around.
I’ve seen marbled light bulbs and it happens when water (or some other vapor or liquid) touches the hot bulb. It causes it to burn out immediately and the heat causes the dark marbling effect. How do I know this? My youngest daughter loves to go crazy with the Windex when she helps me clean the bathroom and whenever she accidentally sprays the light fixture we get the same marbled, burned out bulbs.