The Cardona equation describing the temperature behavior of a bulk semiconductor is utilized to fit experimental photoluminescence data for both strained and unstrained quantum wells (QWs). To account for confinement energy and strain energy, the Cardona equation was modified to include the respective energy offsets. Results of modeling experimentally obtained PL of GaAs/AlGaAs QWs for the unstrained case, and PL of InGaAs/GaAs QWs for the strained case, shows that the modified Cardona equation gives excellent fits to the temperature behavior even for QW bandgaps. Thus, the equation is utilized to extract QW eigenenergies, which are verifiable using the usual effective mass approximation method in solving Schrodinger's equation for a finite potential well.