Wellp, if you’re talking about LED blubs, it’s pretty much a given that the “60W” snowcone blubs are a dime a dozen, but they’re fairly reliable. They don’t push that much power (thus heat) through 'em, so they manage heat fairly well with the cheap Al-foil “heatsink” under the plastic-foil base of the “cone”.
Get to a “100W” bulb, though, and its almost doubling the power/heat going through them at 13W vs 7W. They also cheap out by using fewer LEDs at higher power each to cut pennies from the unit cost.
So with hotwire bulbs, 1 100W bulb puts out more light than 3 40W bulbs, so more light with 100W vs less light with 120W, as hotwire bulbs are more efficient at higher and higher wattages.
LED bulbs are essentially linear, so it flips, and you’ll get more light with 3 “40W” bulbs than 1 “100W” bulb.
So… yeah. I’d rather use one of those spiders and stick 3 60W bulbs in there if I had to, vs a single 100W bulb. Indoors, it makes sense, even if it looks retarded, using it in a table-lamp or in a 1-bulb fixture.
On reason I was and still am looking for a single-bulb solution is for under the patio where I wouldn’t want one of those spiders exposed to dust, humidity, etc. And the bulb sticks in horozontally vs hanging down vertically, so that’s way more weight/torque yanking down on the socket if something’s sticking out a foot from the socket like a gigantic broccoli of light.
In a garage, it depends which would be better.
The spider with 3 bulbs would be a gentler light, lighting up lots and lots of ceiling for that nice gentle ceiling-bounce light with no harsh shadows, but “wastes” light to some extent.
With a flower-light, you can aim each petal to throw light where you want it, eg, away from the wall and/or towards the center of the room. But you have a dark dark ceiling right overhead, harsher shadows from an almost point-source, etc. That’s one thing they never show in the pix advertising those lights. You always see a brightly lit ceiling right about the lights, no shadows, etc.
Anyhoo…
