WE'VE BEEN HEARING A LOT LATELY about those spiral-shaped, high-efficiency lightbulbs known as compact fluorescent lamps, or CFLs. Wal-Mart can't get enough of 'em; the chain has pledged to sell more than 100 million this year. Al Gore put them at the top of his "ten things" list of ways you can combat global warming. Even Oprah has talked them up as a simple, affordable way to reduce your eco-footprint. The only people not getting excited about the quirky-looking fixtures, it seems, are American consumers.

CFLs use up to 75 percent less energy than conventional incandescent bulbs, last up to ten times longer, and save between $25 and $45 over the life of the bulb. But despite their clear environmental and bottom-line benefits, only 5 percent of us are actually buying them. The resistance stems less from our environmental ignorance and more from our cultural obsession with quality of light.

Artificial lighting is a modern necessity: Americans, sadly enough, spend roughly three-quarters of their waking hours indoors. Whether it's soft or severe, uplifting or unforgiving, indoor lighting influences our mood as much as the weather does. The difference between the warm, soothing tones of a candlelit dining room or a fireside den and the cold, punishing glare of a fluorescent-lit hospital or school cafeteria couldn't be more dramatic.

The average American family buys approximately 20 bulbs a year, and our lighting choices are both habitual and nostalgic. Those teardrop-shaped incandescents that symbolize bright ideas use the same basic technology that Thomas Edison patented in 1880. "This is essentially your great-grandfather's lightbulb," says Jason Mathers, an Environmental Defense project manager who specializes in global-warming solutions. "In the age of MP3's, you don't see many people using century-old phonographs. So why are we still using ancient lighting technology?"

CFLs, which began hitting stores in the 1980s, offered new technology, but it was premature. Not only did the bulbs average about $30 a pop, but, like their traditional fluorescent ancestors, they flickered and buzzed and took their sweet time to illuminate fully. Worse, they threw off a wan, gray-blue light reminiscent of fleabag motels. They flopped.

But comparing the newest CFLs to the first ones on the market is like comparing current cell phones to those brick-size portables people lugged in the eighties. "There have been huge leaps and bounds in CFL technology since they were introduced," says Kurt Riesenberg, a lighting-industry specialist at the National Electrical Manufacturers Association. "And yet most consumers still have the misunderstanding that those early glitches haven't been solved."

To grasp how much CFLs have improved, it helps to take a tour under the glass. Incandescents glow white-hot when electricity passes through a tungsten filament, but CFLs create light via a vapor: Electricity excites gaseous mercury particles inside the spiral tube, which causes the tube's microthin phosphor coating to illuminate.