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LED Lighting cool white vs warm white


Freya Black

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Well I've just had a bit of a shock. I bought some LED light bulbs and normally I get cool white bulbs but this time I bought some warm white as they were on sale and there wasn't a choice. However on getting them I was shocked at how green the output was! It was immediately visible and was much worse than on other lights I have encountered even with flo's. Of the bulbs I bought the little candle style bulbs seemed the worst. The bulb shaped bulbs were still bad however. I put one of the candle style bulbs into a lamp with a shade all around and it lit up quite green and with the addition of some orange gel it became quite bright yellow like you might find in a highlighter pen!

 

Is it the case that warm white is a lot, lot less colour accurate than cool white?

The cool white bulbs look a bit blue but I've generally had good experiences with them.

I think I will avoid warm white in the future unless it's for a special effect!

 

Freya

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I've noticed that the warm-white ones can be greenish, but it's mainly a problem of the very cheap types. The cool white are working a lot less hard to convert all that blue, and seem to work a little better. Not, I hasten to add, that many people will want to work indoors under any LED described as "cool white".

 

I have one of the GE remote phosphor types here and its tungsten-like output is very pleasing.

 

P

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I've noticed that the warm-white ones can be greenish, but it's mainly a problem of the very cheap types. The cool white are working a lot less hard to convert all that blue, and seem to work a little better. Not, I hasten to add, that many people will want to work indoors under any LED described as "cool white".

 

I have one of the GE remote phosphor types here and its tungsten-like output is very pleasing.

 

P

 

I'm having good experiences with the cheap cool white bulbs on the whole. With warm white it seems to be VERY variable. I had a bulb some time ago that was warm white and it looked okay and there is a bulb shaped bulb here right now that looks okayish but not fantastic. However these candle bulbs put out such an extreme yellow/green hue that it is extremely visible to the human eye let alone a camera with a Macbeth chart. It is really spectacular. Good if you want an effect!

 

It's actually okay in the table lamp here next to the blue/green lava lamp as it just looks like a lamp with a coloured bulb but it does seem to me that if you are buying cheap consumer bulbs then cool white is the only way to go.

 

I know very little about the GE bulbs they sound interesting.

 

Freya

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Is it the case that warm white is a lot, lot less colour accurate than cool white?

The cool white bulbs look a bit blue but I've generally had good experiences with them.

I think I will avoid warm white in the future unless it's for a special effect!

 

Freya

 

I don't know about the actual spectrum... one of these days I'll setup one of that $15 hobby kit spectrum deals and take shots of various lights... but just from my own evaluation I've avoided anything with the designation of 'warm', because it always has struck me as more 'greenish/yellow/warm' than redish.

 

Of course I'm usually looking at Home Depot offerings... and not 'expensive' photo lighting...

 

As a note, I have take a number of those Internet color match 'games' and I don't think I suffer from any form of color perception dysfunction, as while the Wife is better, she's not that much better... ok... she can name the colors much better...

Edited by John E Clark
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Okay it's not just me then.

 

I actually like the cool white leds but the warm white ones are only really good for situations where you would have coloured lighting anyway. I think they might work well with some lighting gels that actually enhance the effect like +green or yellow or something.

 

Freya

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