Color temperature is independent from spectral uniformity. Incandescent bulbs tend to be rather lacking toward the violet end of the spectrum, but the light they produce is quite uniform in the red, yellow, and green regions. LEDs and fluorescent lights tend to produce a number of discrete wavelengths. Some materials reflect light of certain discrete wavelengths much better than light of nearby wavelengths. When viewed with LED or fluorescent lights, such materials may appear to have a color different from those observed under sunlight, firelight, or incandescent light.
When viewed with LED or fluorescent lights, such materials may appear to have a color different from those observed under sunlight, firelight, or incandescent light.
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As any female shopper knows as clothing purchased in a department store looks entirely different when seen in sunlight.
Or a shopper for paint who trusts the chips in a story like Home Depot!
They make my tomato soup look green.
A color difference might not kill you but the strobe effect of fluorescents just might. I don’t allow fluorescent anything in my machine room. When machine speeds and light frequencies match or synchronize a spinning tool might appear to be frozen——there are a whole bunch of places where squiggle bulbs shouldn’t be used.
I think sunlight can be highly variable as well. These standard CFLs with a very blue spectral dominance are most similar to the overhead noon-day sun while I find the incandescents to be more like the comfortable, comforting light of morning and evening, after the sunlight is filtered through more of the atmosphere. I think that’s why they seem harsh while the good old incandescents are warmer and softer.
I never get over the oddness of the fact that for an object to appear a certain color, it means that the object LACKS that color and is thus unable to absorb it.