led color

I went with a 3200K which is warm.

Cool white, love it. abt. 5,000K.

Gdetrailer wrote:

old guy wrote:
what color led light did most of you used when you switched to led lights, for example, warm white or cool white or what??

Don't go by the "short hand name" like warm white and so on..

LED manufacturers must get a lot of giggles out of folks buying their modules by those names since they seem to have no real rhyme or reason to the name they give the colors...

Instead you should be looking at the color temperature which is in Kelvin (K)..

For example warm white for one manufacturer could be 2600 K (very bug light yellow) and for another 2900 K.. (less yellow).

Comparing to incadescent a "soft white" bulb is typically 2700 K as a baseline to work with.

I prefer 3000K-4000K (some call that "cool white" or "bright white"), to me it is the brightest so that is what I like..

I don't like the 5000K-6500K LEDs (often called "daylight"), they just look horribly blue, I call it death blue.. Not to mention to me it takes one heck of a lot MORE bulbs to make it seem bright to me.

If the LEDs you are looking at do not give the color temp in Kelvin, skip it.. Not worth the hassle guessing at it.

+1
We went with so called Bright White, 3000K to 4000K. This was the best for reading we found.

Google "color temperature", a million color charts; while they may vary a tiny bit, most pretty much agree with each other.

As for what to use in your RV, that's up to you. Many prefer warm, but warm is too yellow/dingy looking for me. I wanted more light when I made the conversion to LEDs. I prefer about 5000K, which is actually the same color as natural noontime daylight; neither blue nor yellow. Once you hit 6000K, it really starts starts to look blue, lower than 4000K looks yellow.

Here's my conversion and pics

For general overhead lights inside the camper we went with 4500k Natural White and we used 3200k Warm White for our reading lights in the bedroom and living area.

4x4van wrote:
Google "color temperature", a million color charts; while they may vary a tiny bit, most pretty much agree with each other.

As for what to use in your RV, that's up to you. Many prefer warm, but warm is too yellow/dingy looking for me. I wanted more light when I made the conversion to LEDs. I prefer about 5000K, which is actually the same color as natural noontime daylight; neither blue nor yellow. Once you hit 6000K, it really starts starts to look blue, lower than 4000K looks yellow.

Here's my conversion and pics

Sadly, CONSISTENCY of LEDs with CRI (Color Rendition Index), tends to be rather poor.. Often 50-60 CRI, compared to a 5,000 K (daylight) CFL which is designed for photography use will have very high CRI of 90-99.


The higher the CRI number you get closer to actual color reproduction of the sun.

So, many LEDs (especially cheap LEDs) that are rated 5,000 K tend to be already very high in the BLUE color due to the poor CRI, often having a rather ghastly blue overtone.

For photography use there is specially designed filter gels for LEDs to correct the poor CRI.

It's buyer be aware.

Buy one of each color if you are not sure and try them out before committing to a large order.

I bought warm white thinking I would like them best, but we decided to go with pure white. I put pure white over the stove for the same reasons already mentioned, and we like that much better than the yellow light that the original bulbs put out, or the warm white leds.

Gdetrailer wrote:

4x4van wrote:
Google "color temperature", a million color charts; while they may vary a tiny bit, most pretty much agree with each other.

As for what to use in your RV, that's up to you. Many prefer warm, but warm is too yellow/dingy looking for me. I wanted more light when I made the conversion to LEDs. I prefer about 5000K, which is actually the same color as natural noontime daylight; neither blue nor yellow. Once you hit 6000K, it really starts starts to look blue, lower than 4000K looks yellow.

Here's my conversion and pics

Sadly, CONSISTENCY of LEDs with CRI (Color Rendition Index), tends to be rather poor.. Often 50-60 CRI, compared to a 5,000 K (daylight) CFL which is designed for photography use will have very high CRI of 90-99.


The higher the CRI number you get closer to actual color reproduction of the sun.

So, many LEDs (especially cheap LEDs) that are rated 5,000 K tend to be already very high in the BLUE color due to the poor CRI, often having a rather ghastly blue overtone.

For photography use there is specially designed filter gels for LEDs to correct the poor CRI.

It's buyer be aware.

Buy one of each color if you are not sure and try them out before committing to a large order.

Agreed; consistency is really lacking in the numerous LEDs available, however I think that it is improving, even among the cheaper offerings. In my case, after purchasing over 25 bulbs (all cheap, from Amazon and eBay), all of the ones listed as 5000K (and even a few at 5500K) were in fact pure white with no blue (see the pics in my post). I had only one bulb that had just the slightest hint of blue, and that was only noticeable when compared side by side with others. Perhaps I was lucky in that regard, but fortunately LEDs are now so inexpensive online, that it is easy (and advisable, IMO) to purchase 1 or 2 of several different colors/styles to try out, then decide what works for you and place a larger order. In my original conversion post, you can see that's exactly what I did. And even the ones that I didn't like for a particular application/location, worked fine for a different spot.

We use bright. I need a lot of light to see anything and this works very well.