Environmentally friendly light bulbs are proving resilient stock as their sales continue to grow according to new research.
In the last three months of 2008, 12.3m of them were sold in the UK up from 8.9m in the same period of 2007.

The research, commissioned by the BBC and conducted by GfK, showed an overall increase of 38.2% at a time of the year when customers where reigning in spending as news of the severity of the recession broke.

However, sales of emulsion paint - seen as a barometer of the industry by GfK - were down 5.8% over the same period indicating a decline in the market fuelled by the slowdown in property sales.