Energy Saved, Sleep Lost: The Unintended Consequences of LED Lighting

I'm concerned by the fact that this response to blue LEDs, while founded on reasonable sounding theory theory, doesn't seem to have much high quality, real-world data AFAIK (e.g. insomnia in houses with blue LEDs vs not, comparisons between people using the glasses mentioned vs not, average bedtimes of people correlated with tv usage, any studies looking for causal links in day to day life, etc). Such studies might exist, but I don't think I've seen or heard them referenced, just mentions of how blue light decreases measured meletonin or what not in clinical settings. Mostly I just hear anecdotes from people who have fully bought into the line that this is a serious problem that requires time and money thrown at it about how awesome their life is now that they've gone out of their way to reduce blue light exposure, opening them right up to the placebo effect.

I'm double concerned since the answer for this seems to be "buy more stuff" and "blindly assume blue == bad without followup research or verification". This is one of those situations where it's pretty easy for companies to swoop in and offer at-best ineffective and at-worst actively harmful products to solve a problem that might or might not exist.

Almost separately from the circadian-rhythm concerns from the article, a major design peeve of mine are random products that have unnecessarily blinding blue LEDs. Worst example I know of: an otherwise competently executed automatic HDMI switch with several incredibly bright blue LEDs, always on. So bright as to be able to read and see all objects in the same room. So when you might dim the lights to watch something? The switch is still blinding blue, usually right at the viewers!

I mitigated this by disassembling the switch and installing some 3-stop ND (neutral density) lighting gel to dim these stupid LEDs to acceptable levels. This product at least afforded a good-looking solution -- many can't be disassembled to fix the problem.

See also: Dyson rechargeable vacuum cleaners.

Maybe it's time for an LED shaming tumblr...

My town recently replaced the dull, orange-ish street lights in my neighborhood with very bright, white LEDs.

The street is now very well-lit, but I share the author's concerns and experience with this kind of light creating an environment that's not conducive to sleep, or to unwinding in general. When I look at the new street lights I feel like they were taken out of a hospital operating room.

Another thing I noticed when the new lights first went in was that the birds started chirping at all hours of the night. I don't know if they were always doing that and I only noticed after the new street lights were installed, but it makes sense that the light would have a similar impact on animals as it does on humans.

I wonder if anyone else noticed this when the lights in their neighborhood were upgraded to these harsh, white LEDs.

After realizing the effect that blue light had on my sleep I went on a crusade to eliminate it from my life after sundown.

I used red LED bike lights for room illumination until I found a series of alternatives. The cheap, remote-controllable 5 meter multicolor LED strips are an amazing solution to evening lighting. It is also possible to get "warmer" LED bulbs. These are often marketed as looking like antiquated filament bulbs. But the best solution is pure red light.

I also removed every single blue-LED backlit computing device from my life. I've made sure to use OLED phones since they were first available. I finally have an OLED laptop, and thankfully, as they are no longer being made! The change in laptop screen really is the most transformative thing for me, as I often need to work in the evenings. I set all the backgrounds in the OS to black, and use browser plugins to set the background of the web to black as well. I have never slept better since blue LEDs came into my life.

People really need to take this issue seriously. There is evidence that blue light's disruption of circadian rhythms and suppression of melatonin production is related to cancer and other health risks. Blue should be reserved for the color of the sky, which is where our bodies evolved to recognize it directly as the input to our circadian rhythms.

I am pleased by the wave of "night light" filters for phones. This is a sign that people are catching on. They use the filters and feel able to get to sleep. We need to go further. OLED everywhere and deep night mode for all.

I think she has a good point about how too much blue light might not be very good for us. There has been interesting research in this are.

It's true that traditional street lights (sodium vapor lamps[1]) are warmer, but they also provide more limited light spectrum (only one frequency of yellow) for this reason they are mainly used where the price and power efficiency outweighs the limited visibilty. So it's not strange that given the option to get better color rendering at a good price, LED technology using full spectrum light has been prefferd.

However, there's nothing stopping us from using LED lights with warmer spectrum, and that argument is probably good to raise. With the higher control of the spectrum that LED gives us compared to the previous street lights we might even be able to create a good compromise using warmer but still wider spectrum lights.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium-vapor_lamp

I highly suggest installing f.lux[1] on your computer and using a similar app on your phone like Twilight[2]. They've done absolute wonders for my sleep schedule and I actually feel noticeably sleepier as the night goes on when using them. And occasionally when I do turn them off (when working late at night), I feel more awake and alert which was an unexpected plus for when I'm under crunch but an unwanted side effect when I'm trying to get a good night's rest.

[1] https://justgetflux.com/

[2] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.urbandroid...

The US has banned[1] the (previously) standard low temperature (~2500k) incandescent light bulbs that have a black body radiation profile. Lots of low frequency. I really prefer these at night and could not find replacements. Eventually someone suggested that the key words are "rugged service". That and "incandescent light bulb" will get you many options on amazon, ebay, etc. Not sure if I need to stock up on these or if they will continue to be available into the future.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase-out_of_incandescent_ligh...

Maybe I'm more radical, but I wonder why we need such constant, brilliant illumination anyway?

I know I'm an outlier but I often don't turn lights on, or only turn on task lighting, and at night outdoors I usually use moonlight when and where I can, or a dimmable flashlight if that's not sufficient.

Shout out to the International Dark Sky Association. They've been talking about the problems of LED lighting for years.

http://darksky.org/?s=LED+lighting

It's strange how the switch to LED lights feels rushed and often not thought through all the way.

Last winter, several intersections around my city had problems with snow accumulating and blocking the stop lights, because the new LED bulbs don't generate enough heat to melt the snow that accumulates. I guess hindsight is always 20/20, but it's surprising the people paid to make those decisions didn't think of it beforehand.

The entire problem they're talking about is high color temperature, not LEDs. No need to spread FUD with titles & writing like this - I have lit my home with pleasing warm white LEDs for years and they've paid for themselves in energy savings.

I am surprised there is not much noise over this. In my city, they recently replaced street lights with the LED ones. These were so bright and piercing, I complained to the city, and they replaced ones near my house to lower intensity one. Still the other one's not the nearest to my house are still so bright, it is very unpleasant, even though they are at a distance. No one in my neighborhood seems to be bothered by these? In my opinion these pose serious risk to health, not just ours but to birds, animals and plants. Even when driving on roads, where these lights are on, they just hit you like a sunlight.

The youtube channel Technology Connections has a couple of interesting articles about LED (and sodium-vapor lamp) bulbs in street lighting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIC-iGDTU40

(Actually, most if his videos are pretty interesting to explore, especially the ones about early TV)

Something I've realized recently is how over lit our homes can be. Like most homes, mine have always had a bunch of lights I didn't really choose with simple on/off switches. But I'm remodeling my house now and have been testing different led lights and smart lighting systems, and in the process have discovered how much better the lights are when they're dimmed!

Setting aside the blue light issue for a moment, I wonder how much a simple reduction in lumens would be helpful. Just putting our lights on a smart dimmer solution (noon home for the curious) has made a big difference. I rarely turn the dimmers above 50% and it's plenty of light with a lot less glare and using even less electricity than having leds on standard switches.

With the remodeled part of the house the lights will all be LED, but 2700k and every one of them will be on a dimmer switch.

The complain is really less about Blue LEDs and more about high temperature white LEDs (5000K and upwards). Those really fuck up the circadian rythm.

A warm or natural white LED is much less harmful (3500K and under and 4000K respectively) and you can mix both. Only a few days ago I found a very interesting LED module that would mix both and use the natural white for full light intensity and mix over to the warm LED when you dim it via PWM or DC going as low as 2000K.

Myself, I built a LED RGBW controller and I use the Red and Blue channels to change the color temperature of the strip itself. The strips can be had for very cheap on chinese websites, individual LED modules with WS2812 pins cost less than a dozen cent. High powered LEDs of various temperature don't cost that much either.

It's not a hard problem and definitely solvable.

"Because red, green and blue LEDs are required to make white LED light"

Just to nitpick a bit: you only need blue LEDs to make white LED lights. Most modern white LEDs use a phosphor coating (the yellow you see in the LED chip) to get white light out of the blue LED.

Are there cities trying to have zero lights at night ?

Sometimes I wonder how it feels to have no light at all. There's a calming aspect to this, my mind really feels that 'no sun = no activity'. But also a little bit of fear too, unless everybody is already home.

I'm not sure the light profile of LED streetlights are sufficiently different enough from Mercury Vapor lighting for anyone to really notice a difference - both have significant emissions in the blue spectrum, and we used MV lighting for 40 years.

"We can’t easily call for our cities to go back to a less intense light. The switch has already been made, and cash-strapped cities need the savings."

Yes we can, and we should. Where does this learned helplessness come from? Cities are always cash-strapped. "It'll cost extra," should not be some trump card to shut down discussion of doing something that is provably better for the populace. There should standards devised for the idea color temperature and brightness of street lighting, and government should be required to stick to them.

I would love to see a night-mode solution for televisions, either via an HDMI pass-through device or a film if necessary.

Do any products exist for that use case?

Does no one produce and high intensity 2700K LED light for street illumination purposes?

It seems like this would be an obvious and easy solution.

I always found it ironic that the controls on my CPAP machine have bright blue back-lighting - and no obvious way to adjust it. It would light up the whole bedroom if I didn't put an old hand towel over it.

OTOH, our clock-radio has a nice, warm and dim orange display.

Maybe I am barking up a completely wrong tree, but this seems to me more than anything else a shameless ad for the "healthe" filters and "Truedark" sleephacking glasses.

My 1985 Volkswagen Golf had a blue LED for the high-beam indicator. I've always wondered how they were able to afford those long before conventional wisdom said they were cheap enough.

Has anyone tried the Health-e screen covers mentioned? I’m wondering how effective they are and how easy they are to use.

I currently use reduce white point and color filters at night.

I bought some anti blue-light glasses on Amazon and they really do make a difference. 30 minutes after I put them on, I start yawning.

If I took them off the effect is jarring.

I must be missing something here.

Every hardware store we go to here (Thailand) has LED lights (in all forms - flood lights, 'tubes', screw-in globes, even the flexible strip-lighting for hidden lighting) in at least two and usually three 'temperatures'. From most to least 'blue', they are "Daylight", "Cool White" and "Warm White". No price difference.

So, is this whole article basically just a rant because nobody this guy knows ever buys "warm white" bulbs?

Try living in Sweden, where people have been dealing with sleep and light for a very very long time.

LED lighting is a pussy compared to the Sun