cooler light is more popular in places where it gets hot: Middle East, South East Asia countries prefer using cooler tones because it gives feeling of freshness and cooleness
I love my daylight bulbs
3500 to 5k. My brain hates all others.
Feel like youre playing both sides
3500k is warm 5000k is daylight
Nobody is buying higher K for their home
Am I the only one who doesn’t replace light bulbs based on color temperature? I usually keep around whatever is already in the rental unit/whatever spares the last tenants left around, because I usually move every year anyway.
In the rare chance I get a choice, I usually choose daylight though.
Most people I know who do care.
Change all of the bulbs when they move in. Throw the old bulbs in a box.
Put the old bulbs back when you move out.
Use the new bulbs at the next apartment.
Some of them also have smart bulbs and those are way too expensive to give away.
I definitely have four different temperatures in my tiny studio. I imagine that would set a sort of person on edge.
I don’t go out of my way to replace light bulbs with all these smartbulbs that have day/night cycles.
That being said, if they go out, I normally pick a smartbulb because the price difference isn’t that much for all it offers in return.
I’ve been working remotely from 3 to 10 PM and the gradual change in color temperature both from the smartbulb and my screen really helps me take it easy as my shift is ending.
Modern society is telling me I need to take melatonin.
I tell modern society I make my own melatonin, and sleep perfectly fine because my lights are warm in the evening.WoHo, míster not addicted to your phone who doesn’t watch it in bed.
We can’t all be like you.
Jokes aside, swtiching to a eink reader helped my sleep so much it’s not funny
I can’t help you with your addiction, I can only offer warm glow.
We don’t know Celsius. How do you expect us to know Kelvin?
10800 to 18000°Ra for the Americans
Oh, thanks! That’s… totally a comprehensible metric for humans that have been inside several suns.
My sisters can’t decide which ones she wants to use, so every room has a different lighting hue. Most rooms have different bulbs for each lamp, so hot and cold are right next to eachothert
I have a somewhat basic home automation, and my lights are programmed to be cooler during daylight hours (where necessary, desk lamp, corridor, etc), and they become warmer at night. The reverse happens early morning in winter, where I wake up while still dark.
Daylight is full-spectrum, not just cool. Flicker-free and high color rendering index. If you can get that in a bulb (bit more expensive than cheap LEDs) it’s quite nice indoors.
Daylight spectrum is skewed by time of day from blue shifted to red shifted.
True, but I just mean that daylight has properties that not all LEDs do, which is why some LEDs may seem harsh even if they are the same color temperature as daylight. But a good LED with high CRI and no flicker is nice at various temps.
There’s a solution here you’re not seeing… RGB lights. Setting the hue on the fly to match what I need has been pretty neat. Pure white for work, natural white for relaxing, red only for venting in the summer since insects can’t see it, green and blue strobe for dance nights, the only limit is your imagination. Living in the future has at least a few perks to go with all the downsides.
Most of them are so expensive, though.
No, Philips, I am not spending $50 on a single bulb, that is madness.
Though IME, the light quality of a real white LED is better than the mix of an RGB led. Also interesting: the cooler the LED is the higher the quality of the light.
Not doubting you, but how do you define the quality of the light?
There’s various metrics, like CQS, CRI or newer versions of it.
It’s basically about how close the wavelength spectrum is compared to a black-body radiator given a color temperature (e.g. an incandescent lamp or the sun).
Most “RGB” lights also have 2 white ones of different CCT for a more natural white.
Yes, and blending in between, including RGB, can enhance the quality of light as well to estimate a natural light source.
wait insects can’t see red? does that extend to spiders? i keep all my windows and doors closed all the time even when its sweating hot because i’m terrified of being invaded by insects and spiders
It’s curious seeing people equate warm lighting with old people and old homes. Maybe it’s just my region but everybody (especially boomers) switched to CFLs when those came out and then to the cheapest, nastiest cool LEDs with cornea-melting levels of blue light after that. Sometimes I feel like the only sane person when I’m walking around and seeing the insides of houses lit up the same color as you’d get from a $5 flashlight 15 years ago.
I have 4000k in the kitchen and bathroom and 2700K or 3000K everywhere else. After reading this thread I’m considering finding some high CRI adjustables because I also find the 4000k lights pretty harsh at night.
Just heard about a phenomenon where people paint their houses white right before selling them (I assume apartments too) and then the new people won’t paint on fairly new paint so they end up keeping the bland colors.
Some people probably depend on their lightbulbs to make the walls look yellow instead of white, I can see those cases comparing the light to a hospital.
I personally like cooler lighting, but there’s too much color around to feel like a hospital in my case.
2700K is the closest to firelight. I refuse to abandon thousands of years of archetypal affection for cheap LED false suns.
2700K kin checking in. Fuck those false gods.
Short take: you don’t have to clean as hard for company.
the only smart house thing I envy is temperature adjustable lights automaticly adjusting the temperature according to the time of day
some thing like that could bring the best of both worlds easily, I find higher temperatures more pleasing at day but like you they are too harsh for me at night
I have a couple lifx bulbs and my partner brought like 8 cheapo Chinese ones with her when we moved in together. It is quite nice. The LIFX bulbs give much higher quality light and better color, but the ability to schedule lights out and wake up to artificial sunrise is incredibly nice regardless. As cool as that is I would not recommend WiFi bulbs to anyone for the following reasons:
- They are horribly insecure. I have them walled off in their own little VLAN but it still makes me paranoid. I’m no hacker but they have Internet access and radios, so I’m sure there’s a server in Shenzhen that knows our comings and goings, when we have guests over, etc. They also have my IP address and all of my neighbors’ SSIDs so they know exactly where I live.
- They are a pain in the ass to set up. You have to power cycle the bulb five times, then wait for it to enter a pairing mode, then you have to wait for the stupid app to find the bulb,which doesn’t always work. After that, you have to select your wifi network from the list, which again it might not always actually detect, even if it’s a 2.4GHz network (because almost none of them support 5GHz). Then you have to type in your wifi password. Repeat this entire process for every. Single. Bulb. You’d think the process for the LIFX bulbs would be more streamlined because they’re six times the price, but you’d be wrong. In theory they’re Homekit enabled, which is cool if you have an iPhone unless you lost the barcode they put in the box. Or unless you have an older model. And again, sometimes they’ll just refuse to work. I have a Color Mini that just stopped being smart one day. It’s a really expensive normal bulb now.
- If you put too many of them on the router your ISP gave you there’s a good chance you’ll start overwhelming it and your performance will degrade. More than like 15 devices total (including the bulbs, smart speakers, TVs, gaming consoles, phones, laptops, etc) and a bottom range router is going to start begging for death.
I’m keeping them because the lady likes them and at present, everything works so long as I don’t touch anything. I’d like to try using zigbee bulbs because they solve a lot of the problems I have with WiFi bulbs but replacing the system I have would be expensive, even after liquidating the old ones on eBay.
They remind me of the old style fluorescent circle lights from the 50s, where they were almost green.
More than even color temperature I’m shocked at the number of people who illuminate their rooms with four clear-glass bulbs in the ceiling fan, so bright you can’t even look at them from the sidewalk. Have these people never heard of a lamp? You can practically see the shadows of dust motes in the air against the sterile white walls.
Both. Both are good.
Daylight for the work rooms and things like home-office or homework desks, warm light for cozy couch corners and bedrooms.
Or go full high-tech and install lights with adjustable color temperature.
Nah 3kK is cool enough for work unless you’re like a graphic designer that needs to see colours accurately. 2.7kK for the rest of the house btw
I just have bulbs that can change the light temperature
I need those blues though to keep me awake
Exactly.
Changing the lights in the office room to the brightest daylight variant I could find and adding an additional 5000 Lux desk lamp during winter months was a gamechanger for focus and productivity.
Still enjoy the warm glow of the living room lights in the evening, though.
Good luck doing any soldering with that.
I solder with 2700k lighting all the time for extended periods of time. Not sure what the problem is.
Shadows are soft and pertinax color doesn’t help.
I have 2700k spots at my work desk’s soldering station, I honestly couldn’t tell you why but I prefer it. Maybe because I’ve always had warm lighting when soldering. Makes me wanna get neutral or cold spots and try that for a change.
For me the bigger issue is light intensity, I swear the old lighting setup at that work desk was as bright as a grave light… dunno how anyone could use that.
My eyesight is shot now. Pretty much all soldering I do with a microscope that has daylight LEDs on anyway.
If you paint you need those 5000 ones or your paintings will look like shit.
Meanwhile all the good paintings were from before lights were invented
That’s why art studios had only windows letting the north light enter. Roughly same uniform cool light all day.
Until the invention of the paint tube (and rail) so you could paint outside.
I would think that accurate color representation would’ve generally required the bright lights and broad spectrum coverage of sunlight, so I imagine people just…painted during the day, by daylight.
Except for the cave paintings, that’s exactly the case.
I don’t know. I feel like I’m more alert and the brain is more active with 4k+ in the day time (on days when there’s low light outside). But in the evening I want it down to 2700k or so, in order to get a proper sleep cycle.
Hahaha more kelvin is cooler
Yup. Humans and physics are weird.
I know?
Wyze light bulbs for the win. I can pick 255 colors.
Oh no, 8-bit is back again… 🫣
We have a “sunshine” script in Home Assistant that sets all bulbs to daylight and 100%. Great for livening up overcast days.
Take a look at the Adaptive Lighting integration if you haven’t already. You can set the colour/temp/brightness of your bulbs for daytime and nighttime, per zone if you want, and it will nicely fade over a set period around dawn and dusk.
Also, the first time I wrote that last sentence it got autocorrected to “around dawn and dick”.
Hah, yea I have some automations I’ve used (including a modifiable sunrise) since before that existed, but basically has the same effect.
Or go full high-tech and install lights with adjustable color temperature.
I may be ahead of the curve a bit. Adjustable colour temp didn’t seem enough. My whole apartment has RGB bulbs since about 5-6 years ago. I just couldn’t go back to on/off one shade lights ugh.
Also I rock a 300w LED panel to get a bit more brightness in my winter days, but that’s not RGB though.
Most strips are RGB. The one you are looking for is RGBWW. Full RGB and Warm & White. But they are expensive ><
I mean yeah they are RGBWW if you put it like that but wouldn’t RGB already include different temps of white? So all of my bulbs are Hue, and yes, they were somewhat of an investment even though my apt is not that huge. Like 300e total years ago though, for uhmm the basic 250e colour set, 5 e36 bulbs hub and remote, and then later I also bought two e14s.
But the LED panel I have is actually a 300w growlight. I couldn’t put it on full I’d burn my eyes. But it serves very well as light therapy on the mildest setting. It’s not got any adjustments except a dimmer though.
wouldn’t RGB already include different temps of white?
Well yes, but actually no. You can produce white-looking light with just RGB, but the quality is going to be shit. Sunlight is made up of the whole spectrum of visible wavelengths, while an RGB will only produce a much sparser spectrum with strong peaks at green, red and blue, and not much else. Looking directly into the light you might not be able to tell, but once the light bounces off colored objects things start looking weird compared to natural light. That’s what rgbww lights are fixing by adding wider-spectrum white LEDs into the mix. For white lights, there is a number called the Color Rendering Index (CRI) that tells you how closely a light’s output spectrum resembles natural sunlight. CRI 100 is perfect sunlight, less than CRI 80 is already pretty crappy looking light.
I’ve been rocking my same hue lights for 8 years. I love having blue and red in the same light fixture. Creates a nice night purple with funny shadows.
Dear god no, you never want mixed light, it’s like walking into an alien space ship or from the Arctic to the Sahara desert just by going to a different room.
Wow, didn’t think about it this way…
But for me: Hell, yeah! Added bonus!
Signals the primeval parts of your brain:
“Here you have to fight to survive the horrors of the pleistocean ice shield!”Or, after changing the room:
“This is your dimly fire-lid cave, here you are save to relax!”
I’m like this, home office, kitchen, bathroom etc is daylight like 5k, only the bedroom and a corner lamp in the couch room are 3k.
This. My wife loves warm light, but I dislike it. I find my visual acuity better under daylight lights, and find myself cursing if I’m trying to work on something (screws in kids toys or whatever)
Personally I just go for warm white for places which should be cozy and cold white for places with a more utilitarian use.
Cold white LED light bulbs are actually more efficient, so I’ll even get more light out of the same power lamp making it easier to see what I’m doing (which is what you generally need lights for in an utilitarian use location).
The center is 3000K tho
Used 5000K because it is missing from OP’s post for some reason.
I use red bulb (or just leds now) unironically, I can see good enough to walk at night and they don’t fucking hurt my eyes like dumbass white bulbs. Seriously how do people use those white bulbs? Just going to a hospital is painful.
Warm white is usually 1800 K to 3000 K. What you showed is less Kelvin than the color temperature of fire (1500 K). We don’t have a color temperature word for that, but “red” works. Of course, such light has no blue component (helps control the cicardian cycle) and is pretty much monochromatic with CRI of <5.
Personally though, something under 1500K is perfect for me as bedtime approaches. It primes me to fall asleep quickly
I’m not saying it’s a bad idea, I have a red bulb too. It’s “handmade” by removing thick red rubber from a “golf ball” decorative 7W CFL and stretching it over a similarly-sized 6W 2700K LED that has instant start and higher light output (not to mention, the taut rubber won’t send glass ball shards into a mercury-vapor-filled tube if it happens to fall). It is not as monochromatic as pure red LEDs, I think it’s close to what the phosphor-based red ones emit (with a lower efficiency of course since I discard the blue and green while they turn almost all blue into red and no green) and those are marketed as cicardian too. I have to avoid looking straight into it though: the pupil is wide open because rods don’t react strongly to red light so long-wavelength (red) cones get massively overloaded and I see a green spot for a while.
This is why I don’t use them.
The paint in my living room looks diarrhea brown and corpse gray under warm light. It’s purple and blue, and there are a lot of windows so I can’t plan for warm light as a default like I can in bedrooms. Daylight bulbs keep the color what it should be.
Feel like this is a very US thing. Here in Brazil we just don’t use the white light if we can’t. Same thing with overhead lighting, we love it here but seems like the US guys just don’t go for it
I use one in my houseplants. Actual house plants - there’s a dispensary a block away from me for the rare times I feel like getting high.
Is kinda sad you have to specify.
Nah, I just wanted to cut off the tired old jokes.
Modern led bulbs can do both and then with home assistant you can script it so the color temperature changes through the day as the sun changes.
In the morning my house is cool light around 6500k and over the day it warms up to about 3k
You don’t even need to script it. Just use the Adaptive Lighting custom integration. You can sync your light color temperature with the sun, or customize it any way you like.
I came here to see if anyone mentioned Home Assistant + Adaptive Lighting. Every single lightbulb in my house is at least a colour temperature bulb and most of them are controlled by Adaptive Lighting. It’s hard to explain just how well it works and how nice it is to have a nook or hallway be ceiling lit and daylight-bright during the day, then warm and cozy by lamplight in the evening.
It’s hard to explain just how well it works and how nice it is to have a nook or hallway be ceiling lit and daylight-bright during the day, then warm and cozy by lamplight in the evening.
Completely agree. I only run it in the living room as it’s north facing and can feel a bit dark.
Besides the light bulbs being coloured, are they a special kind? I tried to find high CRI lighting and ended up replacing the led strips in a cheap LED panel with Auxmer led strips.
I tend to find that white tone bulbs work better than RGB for getting room lighting right, though you can get RGBWW bulbs which do well at both. Honestly I’m not attached to any specific brand but I’ve had consistently good experiences with IKEA Tradfri and Lidl Silvercrest bulbs, which both work with Zigbee.
They also make bulbs that automatically change as you dim them since a smart bulb may not be practical or even possible everywhere.
Incandescent did this without software.
It also generated a ton of heat without software. Everything has its pros and cons.
I’ve never seen an incandescent tube bulb but maybe they exist
Yeah, but they are generally banned over here in the EU so it’s good rhat there’s alternatives that does the same but are also energy efficient.
Ooo what an amazing idea!
