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.
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.
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.
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.
Short take: you don’t have to clean as hard for company.
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.
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.
I can’t help you with your addiction, I can only offer warm glow.
I’m fully addicted to my phone, but, if I try to watch it in bed… I’ll be laying on it in 20 minutes. Don’t know what it is, I hit the bed, I pass the fuck out. pretty sure it could be on fire and i’d just die there.
Jokes aside, swtiching to a eink reader helped my sleep so much it’s not funny
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.
Ooo what an amazing idea!
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.
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 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.
I definitely have four different temperatures in my tiny studio. I imagine that would set a sort of person on edge.
I love my daylight bulbs
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.
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.
I just want to be able to slaughter a pig if I need to. Gotta do that under cool whites my guy.
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.
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.
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.
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 of them are so expensive, though.
No, Philips, I am not spending $50 on a single bulb, that is madness.
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
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).
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 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.
3000K or GTFO
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
The correct answer.
4k
