Does light make noise to you?

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Kind of a weird question, I know. In the past and currently I have a hard time focusing especially indoors when the lights are very bright. When I was a kid, I'd usually say "the lights are too loud" then go turn off a lamp in the room or something. Recently, I have found that a dim environment is best suited to me, and "too bright" is distracting to my thought process. So I call the light "loud" due to its interrupting my thinking.

Does anyone else here have any idea what I'm talking about? This was brought on today because I had turned on the 5-light lamp all the way in my apartment earlier today, then while on the computer decided the lights were too 'loud' so I turned it off.

This happens to me all the time! The fact is that I have been dealing with the annoying sound from lights my whole life. What's worse though is old CRT tv's. They have this high pitched whine that drives me insane.

I don't think of it as loud, I think of it as painful at times.

One of the upsides to having sensory sensitivities is I don't use much electricity. A 60 watt equivalent bulb with a lampshade over it is perfect for most of my lighting needs. One thing that helps me with lights is to buy the bulbs that give off a natural light spectrum vs. the yellowish tint regular (and cheaper) bulbs give off. I find the added expense well worth it.

light doesn't make actual 'noise' (well, fluorescent ones do, but that's the lamp itself, not the light it igves off), but yes, it does bother me.
i dont turn on my lights untill hours after sunset, and often i dont need light at all even in the middle of the night becouse there's a streetlight close to my window; i have full darkness curtains, but they still let enough light trough to find my way to the toilet in the middle of the night

Same thing with me. People would say they turned off the TV, and it would still be on, but on an input, but with no picture showing or something, and I could still hear it from another room, and it'd drive me crazy. And other people would be like "everyone can hear that", but I would have to respond something like "yeah, but does it literally hurt you to hear it?"

Just a bit of clarification, are you saying you actually perceive sounds when the lights are too bright, as in synesthesia, or that you use words used to describe sound (loud) to describe light, but don't actually perceive any sounds?

Heh, I was actually going to let the thread develop a bit but I saw your post and decided to coin in. Great responses so far :D

Synesthesia. What I described in the original post was how I would be focused on a task but the light would interfere with my thinking. It just seems to be "loud," hence why the loud was in quotation marks. So I sometimes detect light as a visual "loudness."

I should point out however that I can still hear CRTs, but that's not light-related as much as it is just the frequency the electron gun inside operates at. But yeah, that noise really gets me ;P And yeah, florescent bulbs, too.

where I worked they had one building that was new, the walls were all painted white and the lighting was comfortable to me. By comfortable I mean a cool white. I switched jobs to hold day shift and the older building had their lighting "cheapened" as some sort of cost cutting effort. They removed approx 1/3 of the prior existing system. The lighting was so inadequate I'd have to use a flashlight to read paperwork. I even went so far as to add a flourescent light to my toolbox.

The worst thing was the lights flickering, it wasn't just one bulb or ballast gone bad, it was ALL of them.

also ...A local supermarket was remodeled and their new lighting flickers,..makes me shop even faster and not want to pick up very much at a time...hurry in, hurry out

I have heard of the expression "loud colors" and "loud clothing" but to me its more of an itching feeling, not a scratchy itch but more like a tingling or an itch you can't scratch.......

Just out of curiosity, what does light sound like?

Well, it's not so much what it 'sounds' like, it's that it gets in the way of my thinking. It's hard to explain, which is why I posted about it. But I guess I can muster a shot here.

I guess it's the interference of light being abnormally uniform in an area that really fires it off. It may be the contrast in a room or the reflection of light in a certain place. If I am trying to focus on a task or think about something though, occasionally very bright light seems to interfere. I can't say for certain that I hear something, so much as an audible entity; rather a disturbance of inner thought caused by the availability of visual distraction. It doesn't happen all the time, only occasionally.

I have left stores before because they are too bright to concentrate. Sometimes if I need to be in a store that is to bright I will wear my sunglasses. People look at me like I'm crazy but I don't really care.
In my house I only use table lamps and softer floor lamps. I will never use overhead lights. I find it very distracting and painful when it is too bright.

I do not, however I do have more along the synesthesia side where colors have tastes and perhaps tones that I can imagine in association with them. So like the color brown I could associate with a low D note (maybe 2 octaves under middle C) then depending on the shade it could be loud or quiet and depending on the bias of colors it could be rough or smooth tones... I don't literally hear it, but my brain interprets most of my conscious thoughts with several senses.

light being too bright is something that I am lucky to not be too sensitive to. Sun in my eyes hurts and distracts, but that's the case for NT people as well.

My sensitivities are mainly sound, touch, and moving things in my vision

While doing homework, my lights have to be off because of it.

I find that some lights make noises and I know that when the cable is off but the tv is on it makes a noise that nobody else notices but it gets on my nerves!! !