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 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.
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.
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
Hahaha more kelvin is cooler
Yup. Humans and physics are weird.
I know?
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.
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!”
We have a “sunshine” script in Home Assistant that sets all bulbs to daylight and 100%. Great for livening up overcast days.
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.
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 but those are marketed as cicardian too. I have to avoid ooking 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 you 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.
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.
I wasn’t expecting to feel so seen at this ungodly hour
Cold light is so clinical and miserable, and I refuse to have it in my vicinity at night if I can help it.
Happy cake day
Happy cake day!
🎉
I dunno why, but warm lighting at night just makes me feel depressed. I need daylight bulbs across my house. Adjustable brightness preferred though, so I’m not blinding myself at night.
Part of my job is selling lighting.
The following conversation takes place at least once a day without falter:
X: I’d like one light like this please (puts some form of light on the table)
ME: ok (goes through the script to make sure they know what they want/it’s compatible/…yaddayadda).
X: oh and it needs to be warm in colour.
ME: 2700k got it.
X: yes, but like warm right? Because it’s led.
(Variant: the rando looking for something small for his toilet. “Oh you know, something like 18000 lumens and 60000k”
You value your eyes at all?)
“You want cold white or warm white?”
“I need a cold light source, like an LED. I’m afraid the fixture would melt if I put incandescent in there.” (Yes, some E14 fixtures in cheap plastic bathroom mirrors etc. only take up to 10-20 W and have a warning sticker)
“What, higher temperature is colder?” (It’s not their fault though that in nature, white and blue things 🧊 are generally colder than yellow and orange things 🔥)
Do people actually confuse color temperature with operating temperature? I wouldn’t want any lights in my house if their operating temperature was ≥2700 K. I want the room to be bright, but not if that means melting the steel beams in the ceiling.
The colour temperature of an incandescent lamp is, exactly and by definition, its operating temperature.
A 2700K lightbulb will not melt steel. The glass is not that hot (you can tell because it’s not glowing itself). In any case, it’s really power that matters - a small object at 2700K will not damage steel if it’s not being continuously heated; it needs to be heated at a rate which brings the steel above its melting point before the heat can dissipate.
Yes, for incandescent lights that’s true. Are they still being sold?
Probably in some places, but that’s not my point. People remember that lightbulbs are hot, and it’s literally called colour temperature (for good reason).
“Your fixture won’t work with led for dimming”
confusion
nervous laughter
disbelief
“You’ll have to replace the driver”
same cycle but even more intense
head explodes
It does not help that some people pronounce LED as “led”, or “ice” in Slavic languages. And “led lampa” is a homonym of “letlampa” (bunsen torch).
Take them up on their offer of lumen output and show off one of these bad boys.
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
Ooo what an amazing idea!
Daylight bulbs are everywhere in Japan and it’s so strange. I tried looking for warm light bulbs at a local store and they don’t even stock them as an option. I do see them used in some people’s houses so I’m sure it’s not universal, but the prevalence of daylight/cool bulbs is weird to me, I’m very much warm bulb gang.
Could you find adjustable LED bulbs? Those are honestly the best of both worlds. Daylight is great for things like cleaning, but I much prefer warm light for general living.
As a side note, one of the reasons why cold white LED light bulbs are a thing is because they’re a bit more efficient than warmer light colors.
The reason is because they all just have 2 kinds of light emiting diode (LED) junctions inside - red and blue - plus a phosphorus layer on top that smooths those two perfect lightwave color peaks in the wavelength domain into a broader light spectrum, and the blue is more efficient than the red, so lamps with a higher proportion of blue emitters to red emitters - and which hence emit more light towards the blue end of the spectrum (i.e. a colder white) - will emit more light for the same power consuption than those with more red emitters and hence whose light is more towards the red side of the spectrum (i.e. a warmer white).
There’s practically no chance this knowledge will ever benefit me, but I’m happy to learn something new regardless. Thanks for sharing!
plus a phosphorus layer on top that smooths those two perfect lightwave color peaks in the wavelength domain into a broader light spectrum
The phosphor absorbs some of the blue and downconverts it to green and red. Some of the blue is let through for us to see. The mixture of R, G and B looks like white to us (but not necessarily to other animals with different cones in their eyes).
2 kinds of light emiting diode (LED) junctions inside - red and blue
I’ve never seen a red LED die inside a white LED. I’ve only ever seen blue dies on their own.
Technically UV-pumped white LEDs exist, but they’re rare and I’ve never seen one. They’re less efficient and require a third phosphor (to make the blue).
You can remove the yellowish looking phosphors on the LED with a small pick to reveal the blue die underneath. Fun fact: some high-power “red” LEDs are actually blue leds + phosphors, not that it’s a particularly good choice but it’s a thing: https://halestrom.net/darksleep/blog/018_led_cob_cutting/
It seemed odd the lower frequency diodes would be less efficient so I did a quick bit of reading and it seems like red light is efficient, but red and blue light aren’t as effectively picked up by the human eye as green and because each light has a different operating voltage there are some consequences.
From what I read the things that makes white lights more effiecient is they only use blue diodes which probably means less circuitry is needed to operate than two sets of alternating diodes and there’s less difficulties going from higher frequency (aka higher energy) to low via filters. Hence efficient green light, blue light and red light at a single voltage.
From what I read last time I properly looked into this (so, almost a decade ago when I was considering setting up a business importing LED lamps), the blue light emitting diode junction simply uses less power to emit the same amount of light.
Electrically speaking it’s no bigger or lesser a problem in terms of circuitry to have just blue diodes or blue + red diodes in there since they’re bundled in blocks of diodes in series (and then multiple blocks are in parallel) and the only thing that differs between those two kinds of junctions from a circuit point of view is the drop voltage of one kind of diode being different from that of the other (diode junctions done with different dopants have different drop voltages), something you take into account in the design stage when deciding how many LED diodes you use per block or what DC voltage will your 110v/220V AC input be converted to to feed those LED strings.
More specifically for LED light bulbs, the messy stuff in terms of electronics is the circuitry that converts the 220v/110v AC input into a lower voltage DC suitable for the LEDs whilst limiting the current (as diodes’ only ability to “limit” current is them burning out from overheating due to too much current), not the actual LEDs.
But I’ll put it even simpler: if the problem was indeed simplicity as you believe, then LED bulbs with only red LEDs would also be very common as they’re simpler than blue+red ones.
You can’t easily use a filter to turn red light into blue. Imo if you needed to light a room for a camera or something not the human eye, red seems like it would be effective for that, but given the filter situation and the eye being best at detecting green light it doesn’t make sense to use red as the base color for indoor bulbs.
From what I read, red LEDs were most efficient at 1.8v and blue more near 4v. Maybe its trivial to do second voltage line but the filter situation is probably the limiting factor here.
I have an actual full-spectrum daylight bulb and it’s pretty good. I use it when the days get really short, seems modestly effective. It’s not the typical “warm” lighting, it’s much more actual daylight. I can’t stand those hard white almost blueish light bulbs. Makes things feel industrial and cold. No idea why anyone calls them “daylight”.
can you name the model? am interested in fielding the winter blues away
Sunsy Shine.
White light is a must for makeup, or any time where you need to see colors accurately. Otherwise give me yellow all the way lol. I love the coziness.
The difference is not as pronounced as in the picture. If you’re used to 4000K as neutral white, yellowish white is 3000K, amber-ish white is 2700K. Only below the temperature of fire (cca 1500K) is when blue fully disappears and you get actual orange or red. And pure yellow is not a possible black body (incandescence) spectrum (that is, it does not correspond to any color temperature) so even though you can set an RGB bulb to that, buy monochromatic yellow LEDs or go under a low-pressure sodium vapor lamp, such lighting feels unnatural.
High CRI is what you want. This is the number corresponding with ability see colors accurately.
i put one of these in a ceiling fan and my roommate started referring to it as The Sun
she’s not wrong but i like to be able to easily see the stuff on my desk I’m tinkering with ffs
Overhead lighting makes it so much worse.
Install spotlights up there and point them at the walls - problem fixed
Or, and hear me out. Get one that you can change. On a gloomy day, during the daytime have it at daylight white. In the evening a nice 2700k.
whole house is setup with daylight bulbs except the dining hall. it has warm lights. I hate it. it’s like I’m eating in the dark.
I was gonna flame you but the reality is both have their place. Sunlight bulbs in hallways and bathrooms looks awful. You can’t see shit and they cast long shadows which makes visibility worse. Daylight bulbs are great for those areas.
That said daylight bulbs are too harsh in the living areas so I understand both sides.
The wavelength has negligible effect on shadow geometry (yes, there is chromatic aberration, refraction, interference but those are very minor in normal lighting, you need special prisms, tiny slits and perhaps lasers to really observe them). What do you even mean?
Also, sunlight (6000K) and daylight (6500K) is pretty much the same color because direct sunlight is >90 % of daylight (the rest is the blue sky and white clouds).
I’m surprised to see pretty much all the comments stating that they prefer the warm lights. It hurts my eyes and feels very awkward to have light coming in through windows into a room with warm lighting, so I mostly use daylight bulbs.
Do warm lighting people just keep the lights off when their curtains are open, or am I alone in this issue?
When my curtains are open, I’m getting ample sunlight and don’t need lighting. When it’s night time, I don’t want light which emulates daylight in my home.
Yes, we only turn the lights on after the sun’s color temperature matches our 2700K lights. During the cloudy winter days we spend the entire day in darkness to avoid mismatched temperature.
Sometimes I really want to get adjustable LEDs for winter, but it is hard enough to find warm ones with a high enough CRI. I once ordered and returned about 8 different bulbs which had price points from €2 to €100, before going to Ikea and buying bulbs there.
I am going to be redoing the lighting in a house I just bought. I went down the rabbit hole of learning about all the options. It’s hard to find but it is possible to find dimmable, tunable LEDs with a high cri and have matter support so I could use them with Home Assistant. I haven’t actually purchased any though so I can’t report my experience.
Please share your experience when you get to it! I try to avoid iot stuff though and thought of something simpler like dimmable lights that get warmer when dimmed - like the Ikea ones, but with 2700k as the highest point it does not really work.
I thought that maybe the ideal solution would be to wire DC lightning with relays controlling groups of different temperature LEDs. Maybe glueing LED strips to the ceiling and a translucent film under them to diffuse it a bit? I feel like ordering a giant bin of random LEDs should lead to the best possible CRI.
Also each of the 8 bulbs I ordered had Ra>95 written on the box and they just lie because I can instantly tell that the light is wrong. Bad CRI is so prevalent that friends come to my house and think my lights are incandescent.
I did buy a super expensive dimmable tunable led strip from Yuji LEDs. It was expensive even before the tariff situation, so really bad now probably. But the LED was top notch. I followed a guide someone had posted to reddit to make a SAD lamp, and used ESP Home to make it so it made a sunrise effect starting all the way as far yellow as it went and ending at the brightest point. It is just a strip with 2 different temperature LEDs on it and it combines them with directions from ESPHome (oh I had to get a controller for the ESPHome connection. It’s just a “dumb” strip that you have to control the voltage to change).
Since programming it was rough for me, I had some fun experiences where it would just randomly go from super dim to full bright while I was sleeping and hoping for a gentle wake up from a nap. My half asleep brain really thought someone had opened the curtain to the sunny outside. I started thinking of my project as “sunlight in a can”.
Anyways I happily shipped that expensive project off to my brother who suffers from SAD and he never used it even once.
I’m a mixed light person and I prefer to keep my lights off when the windows are open. Modern bright lights tend to hurt my eyes, especially as my wife has a nasty habit of standing right next to one when talking to me.
