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Comment by evanlivingston | Hacker News Reader

I use incandescent and halogen everywhere and don't have a problem with color temperature. Also, the CRI of my bulbs is incredible.

My house has maybe 20 light bulbs in it, most of them under 75 watts, except for a couple of strategic halogen fixtures.

Sometimes I think about getting LED smart lighting, but then I think about how many iterations of setups I would have to go through it get everything dialed in, all the e-waste I would be contributing to, all the plastic, all the security vulnerabilities, all the software updates, all the glitches, all the flicker from cheap PWD circuitry and I decide to stick with simple glass and red hot metal.

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On top of that, even the "warm" color temperature LEDs put out a pretty good spike of blue light. I'm working on some analysis of this, and even the "warm glow" sort... yeah, there's a ton of blue. Right in the realm of spectrum that convinces our body it's day.

So I'm not sure that the whole color shifting makes a big difference if you don't get rid of the blue as well. White LEDs are generally blue LEDs with phosphor coatings, but they still leak the blue. It's quite annoying.

I've been going back to incandescents and they're properly nice in the evenings.

> On top of that, even the "warm" color temperature LEDs put out a pretty good spike of blue light.

That's what I figured. LCD monitors are all painful for me to look at as well.

I find most "2700K" LEDs sub-optimal. Helped someone set up their office recently. It was too dark with 1 bulb in each of the 3-bulb ceiling fixtures (48" fluorescents). We found 48" 4000K LEDs in the ceiling fixtures. She found 3000K tubes (GE? Feit? Philips) at the home store. They're quite pleasant, much better than other 3000K bulbs I've been around.

I have some Citizen "CITILED Amber Color COB" on top of my kitchen cabinets. They have a little hump in the blue portion of their spectral graph, but are fantastic. Rated at 2200K

https://ce.citizen.co.jp/cms/ce/lighting_led/dl_data/COB_Amb...

Also have some Amber Philips 2000K bulbs, which are quite nice.

> I use incandescent and halogen everywhere and don't have a problem with color temperature.

Well, you might not have a problem, but some people like colour temperatures >3000K.

> Sometimes I think about getting LED smart lighting, but then I think about how many iterations of setups I would have to go through it get everything dialed in, all the e-waste I would be contributing to, all the plastic, all the security vulnerabilities, all the software updates, all the glitches, all the flicker from cheap PWD circuitry and I decide to stick with simple glass and red hot metal.

I’ve found a lot of that hassle is mitigated by getting high-end dumb LED bulbs, paired with reliable smart switches (only where specifically required for automation purposes) from a traditional lighting manufacturer with long support periods. (Lutron.)

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