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.
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 just want to be able to slaughter a pig if I need to. Gotta do that under cool whites my guy.
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!
For the people saying “5kK+ in the office, 3kK- in the bedroom” what do you use in your kitchen? In your bathroom?
Adjustable temperature bulbs and local control/automation
4k
As someone with shit vision, I also want my house lit up like a hospital.
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).
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.
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.
Daylight bulbs only belong in the bathroom. That’s the only place I want to see things that bright. Also, if there’s anyplace you want to feel sterile and hospital like, wouldn’t it be the bathroom?
the kitchen too
I want going to the bathroom to feel like the scene in Fear & Loathing where there’s a dude getting high off LSD by licking it off another dude’s sleeves.
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.
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.
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.
Recently kitted put the whole apartment with Philips Hue lights. Love my colourful jungle vibe showers.
I want my home to have full range color equivalent to open windows. But I prefer my lights to change color with the sun so as not to mess with my circadian rhythm. Incandescent color bulbs just remind me of being a kid visiting the elderly. I’m mostly a “open the blinds instead of turning on a light” purist during the day.
Also, emberlight for bedtime, and simulated sunrise as an alarm. Though my wife hates both of those as I have to wake up earlier than her.
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.
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.
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
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
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.
Hahaha more kelvin is cooler
I know?
Yup. Humans and physics are weird.
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.
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.
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).
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.
