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Old 07-17-2013, 04:26 PM   #6
jbeech
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Join Date: Sep 2012
Posts: 135
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When you are speaking about color temperature, you should know lights are specced in terms of degrees Kelvin. Thus, 2800 degrees is a warm white, roughly in accord with an incandescent bulb. 3200 degrees is a halogen, which is a little bit whiter but still 'warm' in appearance, e.g. yellow-ish. Cool white is about 5000-5500 degrees. This is typical of what you find in many offices, as well as most shop-type fluorecent bulbs and yes, this is a definitely whiter than an ordinary incandescent bulb. It really doesn't matter which you use because your eyes will adapt to a very wide range, the sun at noon can be 9000 degrees, yet still looks yellow but a 9000 degree light will look blue-ish because it's so white. In fact, some grow bulbs and aquarium lights will be as high as 20,000 degrees Kevin, which looks really blue but makes the corals 'pop' in color and look really bright. Anyway, what most find objectionable is mixing and matching, e.g. some warm white with some cool white in the same space. What I am doing with my conversion is settling on "cool white" because the purpose of my truch is as a mobile workshop and thus, I'll be going in and out during daylight hours and the transition is less noticeable at this point in time. By the way, I opted for a nifty LED fixtures (4' long replacement for fluorescent fixtures) for the box area. They're made by Utilitech Pro and they're available at Lowe's (part number MXL-301). Anyway, I purchase four of them for about $80 each, which is a pretty good deal as of this writing, mid-2013. FInally, LEDs are available in a wide agmut of color temperatures. For example, I equipped my shop with warm white fluorescent replacement tube (you just eliminate the ballasts and connect them to the tombstones just like a regular tube attaches) and they are very easy on the eyes, come on instantly, and greatly reduced the HVAC load because they just don't get hot like a T-8 ballast and bulbs do.
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