With the new LED lights, you can select for CRI ("Color Rendering Index", indicating how well the bulb defines the colors it illuminates) and color temperature (warm white, cool white, or daylight). Traditional incandescent lighting is "warm white" (which tilts towards red), so that's what we've come to expect in living areas. In work spaces, we find more cool whites. In terms of color temperature (Kelvin), warm white is 2700 or 3000; cool white is maybe 4000, daylight is maybe 5000.
Historically we didn't have much choice, but now that we do, I find myself inclined to install daylight everywhere, and also to prefer the high-CRI (preferably above 90). This somehow strikes me as "natural", although I wonder if some rooms are "supposed" to feel the comfort or coziness of warm white. I wonder whether the societal preference for warm white is just that we got used to the inherent quirk of the old bulbs, or whether there's some fundamental biological appeal. I wonder whether my personal preference for the bluer lights has some connection to autism. I wonder whether these questions are stupid.
01 Dec 2018, 1:26 am
