Color temperature are a measurement of light in Kelvin. Color temperature determines how warm or how cool a light source will appear to the human eye. Low Kelvin numbers represents warm light and create light that looks like a candle flame or sunset.
High Kelvin numbers represents cool light and create light that looks like an overcast sky or daylight. Color temperature can alter the mood in a room. Additionally, color temperature can alter the productivity levels of a person in teh room.
How to Choose the Right Light Bulbs for Your Home
Because a room can have different purposes, different color temperatures should be used in different areas within a room. For instance, a bedroom may require warm light to aid in the relaxation of the person in the bedroom, but a workspace may require cool light to aid in the focus of the person in that area of the home. When purchasing light bulbs, its important to understand the difference between lumens and watts.
Lumens measure the brightness of a light bulb, while watts indicate the amount of electricity that the light bulb will use. Many people makes the mistake of focusing on the number of watts that a bulb uses. However, to understand how bright a bulb is, people should focus on the lumens of the bulb.
Another factor to consider when purchasing a bulb is the color rendering index (CRI) of the bulb. The color rendering index of a bulb indicates how accurately the bulb will display the true colors of the objects in the room that are being illuminated. A higher color index means that the colors will look as natural as possible to the viewer.
Using bulbs with a low color rendering index can cause the colors of objects to look washed out. Additionally, the true colors of food will not be accurately represented when using bulbs with low CRIs. For these reasons, people should purchase bulbs with a high color rendering index for areas of the home that is used to prepare food, such as the kitchen and bathroom.
Finally, another way to effectively manage the lights in a room is through the concept of layering light. Layering light mean not using just one bulb in a room. Bulbs can be layered in a room to provide general light and task lights.
Overhead bulbs can be used for general illumination, while task lights can be used for specific tasks in the room. Because task lamps can have different color temperatures from overhead lights in the same room, it is possible to create different zones within that one room. However, it is generally better to avoid mixing many different color temperatures within an area.
If an area has both cool and warm light within it, the eyes will have to constantly adjust to the differences in color temperatures. This can be uncomfortabel for the individual who has to make those adjustments continuously. Bulbs that is considered smart allow for individuals to control the color temperature of the bulbs through a digital application.
Smart bulbs allow individuals to change the Kelvin setting of the bulbs at any time. Additionally, the smart bulbs can be programmed to follow an individual’s circadian rhythm. The circadian rhythm is an individual’s biological clock.
Following this clock allows individuals to sleep better. During the evening, when the circadian rhythm dictates that individuals should be sleeping, the smart bulbs can emit warm light into the bedroom. However, in the morning, when the circadian rhythm dictates that individuals should be awake, the smart bulbs can emit cool light into the bedroom.
For these reasons, smart bulbs allow for the atmosphere of a room to be changed. Efficiency can be an important factor when individuals purchase bulbs for there homes. Efficiency refers to the number of lumens that a bulb can produce per watt of electricity that is used by that bulb.
LED bulbs are more efficient than old incandescent bulbs. Bulbs that emit the same amount of lumens as old bulbs use less electricity when they are LED bulbs. For these reasons, LED bulbs can lower the electricity costs for a household.
For workshops, users can select high output bulbs because high visibility is necessary for safety in the workshop. However, for bathrooms, individuals can purchase neutral color temperature bulbs so that accurate visibility of features of the body is visible in that room. In each of these scenarios, it is important for individuals to select bulbs based off the specific purpose of the room in which the bulbs will be used.