Properly selected, a book light can reduce eye strain by providing excellent lighting while reading, even in darkened venues, and can conserve both energy and money. A sturdy clip on book light design can make your light easy to securely attach to your book, book holder, or book stand, and many can do double duty as hobby, craft, podium or task lights. Light weight incandescent or LED designs can provide just the right lighting anywhere you need it, without wasting energy or disturbing others around you, like a spouse or partner on the other side of the bed.

By lighting your reading materials with the right quantity and color of light, a book light can save your eyes from strain and help you read even when the lights are low. Our eyes require more light as we age, and providing the correct amount of light exactly where we’re reading can be a real challenge. Obviously, the best light for reading is natural sunlight coming directly over your shoulder, but we often need to read when or where sunlight isn’t available. Hence, the correctly selected book light, a light we can use any time and any place we choose, iscan be} an incredible convenience. By then turning off the overheads and other lighting illuminating so much more than our reading materials, we can save considerable energy and the money it takes to pay for that energy.

When making the choice between incandescent and LED designs, three primary concerns include: the differences in the type of light produced by these two technologies, the cost of original purchase, and the cost of operation over time. Incandescent light sources typically create a warm, somewhat yellowish light, and incandescent bulbs typically last between 15-25 hours of use and then must be replaced. LED lights put out a whiter, cooler light, with many designs now optimized to be the equivalent of the output of lighting from the sun. Hence, most book lovers find the light of modern LEDs to be more “sun like”, producing greater clarity and contrast and making all printing easier to read. While replacement bulbs for many incandescent book light designs are usually available in local electronic retail shops, and over the Internet, the cost of replacement can really add up over time. Because LEDs provide life expectancies of 10,000 to 50,000 hours, the 10-20% greater initial cost of acquisition quickly becomes irrelevant. Generally, LED book lights are now the preferred choice over the older incandescent.

Battery powered book light designs are the handiest, as they can be used anywhere. Unfortunately, batteries themselves are also a replaceable item, typically lasting only 20-30 hours of use at best, in LED or incandescent designs. Available A/C adapters are offered for most book lights, and another option is to make use of a good battery recharger and rechargeable batteries. Most book light designs make use of either AA or AAA batteries, and many rechargeable options are on offer. In addition, if your light is typically used near to an electrical outlet, an optionally available A/C adapter is usually a money saving investment.

Finally, the area over which the light is dispersed is also a meaningful consideration when choosing the perfect book light for a particular application. If your light will only be used to light up a standard size, mass market paperback, a simple LED or incandescent clip on light design will likely be adequate; however, if you read magazines, most hard cover books or a stand full of music, you’ll need a more powerful design that distributes the light over an appropriately larger area. The ideal way to determine the best design for your particular application will be to test it in actual use. When shopping, make sure your retailer provides both good pre-sale and return service, in case your first choice turns out not to be as suitable as you had hoped. With diligence, you can buy just the right clip on light for just about any application.