I bought a package of 4 "daylight" CFLs from Home Depot. Put one in the kitchen and it had the horrifying light from hell effect. I immediately felt ill and almost depressed, like I should commit suicide. However I couldn't return them as I lost the receipt.

But then I used them to replace the 40 watt incandescents by the bathroom mirror. And it looks great in that little bathroom. These alleged replacements for 60 watts bulbs actually work better as replacement for 40 watters.

It appears that the light from hell effect was only because the CFL was too dim for the kitchen.

The other two CFLs worked fine in the basement hall and in my architect's lamp. It's really good in the lamp because the daylight color makes colors pop--just like real daylight does. And the lamp doesn't get very hot making it easier to move around.

In fact, there's a weird effect at night, when I leave the lights on in the bathroom; down the dark hall it looks like daylight must be flooding into the bathroom window. I find that a disconcerting but ultimately cheerful and optimistic effect.

The yellow color of common incandescents really works like a mask, flattening out or muting colors. It puts everything in a sort of cheesy urine glow, and imo makes everything harder to see. If you have a lot of smoke, dust, dirt, wornout furniture, yellow incandescents may be preferred. I personally prefer the daylight incandescents for the living room, however these don't seem to be as true a 'daylight' as the CFLs.

Incandescents do seem to work better in living room lamps than CFLs, because they seem to work better when you need dim light. But if you need bright light, CFLs are the way to go, imo.