Ceiling fans in one of our homes has these little, dinky 65 watt candelabra bulbs. They put out no light. Is there a replacement bulb that will offer more light without blowing out the breaker?

As long as you replace the bulbs with same or lesser wattage, you should be fine.
As to getting more light out of the fixture, that depends on the type of bulbs the fixture will accept.
If the unit has a true candelabra base for the bulbs, your options are going to be limited. Also, the shape of the fixture and shades could limit the type of bulb that will fit.
Take one of the bulbs to a local lighting store ( not a big box), and talk to them about available options.

I'd more about burning up the fixture than blowing the breaker if you went with higher power.


The better incandescent technology are krypton or xenon filled halogens that put out about 900-1000 lumens in that power range (I've seen ~900lumen candelabra base 60-watters, but not 65s). But the FIXTURE efficiency is everything, since these tend to be tiny li'l sparkly things, no R or PAR optics to direct the light. If the fixture doesn't reflect/direct the light all you get is a glary hot-spot until it gets a lamp-shade, and the shade absorbs a fraction of the light.

The biggest candelabra base CFLs are ~14-16W, and put out 650-750lumens. Most are also non-directional, but more diffuse than halogens. They are much bulkier than the tiny halogens, but have a much lower glare-factor which may provide more USEFUL light even at the lower lumen-level. A hot-spot in your field of vision such as a naked halogen causes your pupils constrict, lowering the visual efficacy at that light level. CFLs are still much brighter than background, but orders of magnitude lower contrast than a halogen filament.

Candelabra-base reflector floods also exist in CFL technology, and there is at least one dimmable 16W CFL flood out there (don't know how well it dims- most pretty much suck):

http://www.lightbulbsdirect.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=32016-ADIM-CAND&Category_Code=CFDimmable&Store_Code=001

The incandescent candelabra base floods & spots are only ~300 lumens though- far less overall light than a 60W xenon halogen, and only half the light of the dimmable 16W CFL in the link above.

When switching to a CFL or LED technology pay close attention to the color rendering index (CRI) number, and the color temperature number (in degrees Kelvin , or "K"). No matter what color temp, a CRI above 80 is critical if it's being used as ambient lighting. For viewing food or human skin keep the color temp between 2700-3500K. ("Warm white" to "neutral".) For mostly reading ~4000-4800K is easier on the eyes. Avoid 5000K "daylight" or higher unless you know for sure that's what you want. Color temps above 5000K are very blue in tone for most indoor residential applications, but can look great in fish tanks, etc.