Full Spectrum Lighting - Is it any better?

lennon asms: "Lighting in my apartment sucks. I am giving some thought to full-spectrum lighting fixtures, like the the Vita-lite. Some places say it's not any better than regular lighting, others say it's just great. What do you think?" I find the quality of lighting in my work environment to be very important. Would lights such as these be better than your standard soft-white or flourescent bulbs?

Comments

Works for me

[maetenloch]

I put full spectrum bulbs in my office several months ago, and so far I've been very happy with them. I have a private office, but unfortunately without any windows so the only light sources are fluorescent lights. I got the full spectrum lights from Home Depot for only about $6 (GE I think). There are some other specialized manufacturers that charge $40+ for their bulbs, but as far as I can tell, they're essentially the same as the ones i got at Home Depot.

The difference is quite amazing - I never realized how sickly yellow the old lights were. The new lights have much more blue in them, and really do seem more like natural sunlight. Now I feel like I have skylights in the ceiling.

I can't tell if changing the lighting improved my performance, but it did make feel more comfortable and alert in my office. My co-workers like to keep their office dim except for their monitors - not me, I find that a dark room strains my eyes and makes me sleepy. I may be an exception since a lot of programmers like a dim room setup, and in our main office the engineering wing has no fluorescent lights on at all. Still I find that I do my best work in a naturally lighted environment. Without windows, full spectrums lights are as close as I can get.

Color Temperature and Bulb Quality Affect Light

[stinkydog]

The quality of flouresenct light is affected by many factors:

Color Temperature
Bulb Quality (you get whast you pay for)
Power and Ballast quality (Flicker)

For some other thoughts check this out. It is about lighting fish tanks and not cubes but it is still applicable. I supplement my flouresents with an incandescent bulb for better quality of light. More information on lighting theory is available here.

Try some of this if you want a different color.

That may not be a coincidence....

[coyote-san]

Hmm... on the one hand you have large rooms lit by the standard el cheapo fluorescent tubes. On the other hand you have a bunch of educated people prefering darkness to bad illumination.

Think it's just a coincidence?

Now toss in the fact that most monitor's (and all TVs) are "hot" - they're far more blue than they should be since it's a cheap way for the manufacturer to make them look "bright." (That's also why rooms with TVs look blue from outside.) Better monitors allow you to adjust the "color temperature", but most people don't know about this control or find a cooler temperature "dull."

This means that people who work in front of a screen are getting hit with excess blue, and the overhead fluorescent lights also have excess blue.

Still think it's just a coincidence?

Personally, I wouldn't mind seeing OSHA mandates that overhead lights be full-spectrum and monitors be adjustable to the natural temperature (6500K?). It takes a few days to get used to it, but it's a lot more comfortable.

What were you smoking?

[dhartshorn]

when you wrote that? Have you ever looked at a spectral analysis of a fluorescent light? The ones I'm looking at (Illuminating Engineering Society Lighting handbook, Reference Volume) show a continuous distribution with four spikes that are present in all bulbs classified (Cool White, Warm White, White, Deluxe Cool White, Deluxe Warm White, and Daylight).

Your theory of gas mixtures affecting color is also incorrect. Fluorescent lights are the product of an electrical discharge in a low pressure mercury vapor. Some trace gases are added to improve startup, but not color. Color is determined by the phosphor coating on the glass, in exactly the same manner color is determined in CRTs. Change phospors, change colors.

Observing the spectra of the different classes of fluorescent bulbs shows that Cool White (most typical) differs from Daylight by a reduction in the red (slight) and yellow (significant)and an increase in the green (slight) and blue (significant). Cool White has a yellow component peak that is approximately double the value of the peak that straddles blue and green. In the Daylight bulb, the peaks are relatively the same. The two of the four spikes (yellow, green, blue, and indigo) are also affected, with yellow reduced and indigo boosted.

Incandescent (tungsten filament) lamps are stronger radiators in red than blue, following a somewhat straight line that gives us a red luminace that is approximately 4 to 5 times greater than blue. Yellow comes in at about 3x blue.

Sunlight has a strong peak in the blue-green and decays to about half power in the red. Continuous, but not uniform. And it clearly demonstrates why Daylight bulbs boost the blue component (while still leaving at least 1.5X the "natural" yellow component).

(This clearly shows that six pictures and some graphs are worth a couple hundred words.)