FAQ

Folks working behind the scenes in most any industry secretly revel in salting conversations with jargon. The lighting industry is no exception.

Therefore, technically speaking, a "lamp" is a device that generates light when connected to electric power.

The term "bulb" describes the glassware before it is made into a functional lamp.

Scraping against the grain of common (and reasonable) reference even further, what folks call a "lamp" is technically (that word again) a "fixture" or "luminaire." For example, when a normal person says "table lamps" our merchants are quietly thinking "portable fixtures."

Luckily, the nature of the World Wide Web prevents us from getting bogged down with industry speak. So, online, bulbs = light bulbs and lamps = light fixtures.