Interior lighting questions

[Richard Davis]

Two questions: I need to replace the light fixture over the main table in my 13 ft Scamp. Currently, it has an incandescent bulb. Most new fixtures are for LED, which -- in my experience -- casts a nasty light for sitting around and playing cards in the evening. (Wife is even more offended!) Are there LED lights that are FAR more friendly? 2nd question: Years ago, I installed new reading lights with halogen bulbs. Excellent to read by, but are these a huge draw on my battery, compared to the incandescents that Scamp originally installed? Many thanks.

[thrifty bill]

I use all LEDs including the reading lights. Dropped my power consumption by about 90% compared to incandescents. LEDs come in many light ranges. Just get the ones you like. I replaced the entire fixtures in my 1977 Trillium, as the original fixtures and lenses were pretty beat and brittle.

[cpaharley2008]

Warm white is the color LED you want that matches close to incandescent. see here https://www.energyearth.com/general/...ing/learn-more

[ZachO]

Yes, get the warmest light possible. The kelvin scale is good to be familiar with. I spent probably $60 on LED bulbs for a house I was in before getting light I could tolerate. Just for my bedroom...

I tried “natural” light for spots in my trailer I thought I’d need brighter light. No way. For me, warm white is all I can handle. It’s becoming a problem for me when people buy new houses or remodel and put in LED light. I do as much as I can in the dark...

[floyd]

LEDs are sold in different "colors" from a yellow light to a white "daylight".
Look at the numbers... Usually from maybe 2800 to maybe 5000.
I am writing this without an effort to be accurate, its just from memory.
I my trailer when I switched to LEDs I used a pure white light in the bathroom for a nice clean look.
Then I used a more yellow light in the living area which matched the original color of the incandescent bulbs which I replaced.
This worked great for us and if there is a difference it is negligible.
Glad to be rid of the wasted power and the heat, which spoiled the bread in the cabinet above my wife's favorite reading spot.


EDIT:
I just read the other comments and as you can see we all had about the same results!

[snowak]

My wife and I are quite particular about this very thing. As Floyd mentioned, LEDs have a color rating of sorts, measured in Kelvin, I believe. We’ve found that anything higher than 2700k or so is far too “clinical” feeling—a very blue, cold, artificial hue, if you will. Anything below 2700k tends to be warmer and closer to the traditional incandescent bulbs, which we find is more comfortable and inviting. If you’re going the store route, check the boxes for this rating. It used to be that the stores stocked the colder hues a lot more than the warmer ones, but as LEDs are becoming more commonplace, I’m starting to see the stores offer up more options. We switched all of the interior and exterior lights (exception to the side markers) in our Trillium to LEDs and are happy with them.

[Martin.P]

One thing no one has mentioned is the Solar inflatable LED Lights. We have 4 of them. and use them all the time.

[Richard Davis]

Thanks for all the input. I ended up installing a LED light from Thin-Lite that fit (kind of) the space Scamp originally allocated for a no-longer-available incandescent feature. That was over the main table. The quality of the light seems quite acceptable (unlike many of the earlier LEDs we have experienced in our home). I'm even thinking of replacing the incandescent light over the sink just to save unnecessary draw on the battery when my wife is cooking up all those delicious dinners after the sun has gone down! I wish I knew numbers info for this LED light that I could share, but I've got nothing but the eyeball test, and it appears to pass muster!

[squish]

I really like cutting consumption of electrical
So LEDs were a great idea, however our Bigfoot came with some of the earlier versions of LED conversion bulbs, with a bright bluewhite light.

Not the warm glow I like to have when relaxing around the table at night.


So I went to a well known place that sells LED retrofit lighting, just so I could see the color temp, and figure out what I liked best.


We ended up with a handfull of different options,

Bright daylight in the bathroom and in the kitchen,

Warm light over the table and in the area between the cabin and overhead (we have a truck camper)

By switching out all of our lights to LED and changing the range hood fan to a brushless motor, I've reduced my power consumption to very low levels.

We did find that a $10 amazon dual light dual switch LED fixture, had terrible optics, and made our eyes quiver, as it really showed the yellow and blue lights, so I installed a bit of tracing paper (vellum really) between the bulb and the outside lens, that diffused the light enough that it cast a much better glow.

We even changed the bulb in our fridge and in the range hood, both to LED lights, the one in the fridge especially would heat up enough that it's slightly warped the plastic around the lens and the holder.

The range hood light switch was one of the best ones, it was a much larger panel and now gives a much more even light across the whole stove.

[Richard Davis]

I did decide to change to LEDs over the sink too. I thought I’d look on the packaging to see what the “numbers” were. Oddly, nothing there about light quality other than “cool white”. It looks passable right now — hope it doesn’t prove nasty turning the next couple of months on the road! If so, we’ll be dining by candle light, as we did in the old days.... Seems odd that you folks have so much useful information about LED light quality, and the manufacturers don’t tell you much of anything.

[gordon2]

Are you buying on eBay?
Try: https://www.superbrightleds.com/
Yes you will pay more but they provide a great deal of technical information and support. And they frequently have 10% off sales.

[Lynn Eberhardt]

You want "warm white" or 2700 - 3000 K.

[k corbin]

They LED lighting I see being sold at the local marine stores normally includes the description of cool white or warm white on the package. Sometimes they even give the Kelvin rating numbers.

I myself prefer the Kelvin numbers to be right about 5000 which is fairly close to natural daylight. It is cheery lighting, they use it in those SAD lights to combat seasonal effect depression that happens in the winter time.

If someone told me ...you want to get warm white I would tell them no I really don't want warm white lights, because they mess up the color of the art work I am trying to look at or create and they contribute to eye strain when I am working.

[Tug Hercules]

My preference are LED Bulbs that fall in the 3000 - 3500 Kelvin range.

To me they provide the best light for reading / playing cards in a smallish enclosed space (Trailer).

[ARVZ]

Stick with me here, I will explain some missing pieces about lighting quality: There are two commonly available ways to characterize the quality of artificial light. One is Correlated Color Temperature (CCT), the other is Color Rendering Index (CRI).



CCT is on the Kelvin scale; if you heat a piece of tungsten to 2700 degrees K it glows that nice warm yellow color given off by a standard voltage incandescent light bulb. At 5000 degrees K, you have a blue-white color which is more or less the color temperature of natural daylight (it can go much higher). 2700K just feels good to a lot of people for various reasons; light is a very psychologically charged issue. 5000K looks blue and cold when a light bulb makes it, but we actually have better visual acuity in this range and task lighting like shop lighting is great in this color temperature.



Paradoxically, the 2700K light is described as "warm" while the 5000K light is described as "cool", but it's all about that glowing hot metal color, so we just have to get used to the blue 5000 degrees Kelvin being called "cool". It's crazy. Try to find the actual CCT for any light rather than the silly names ("cool white"; WTH does that mean?) the companies give them.



Fluorescent lamps have been commonly available in CCTs of 2700, 3000, 3500, 4100, 5000 and ~6500K. If you look at the lighting on the ceiling in stores and offices you will often see different colors of lamps installed next to each other. "Warm" CCTs are more atmospheric, while "cool" CCTs are better for task lighting like reading printed materials and measurements. A lot of cheap shop lighting is 4100K. "Full spectrum" lamps are typically up around 6500K and have a high CRI, but we'll get to that. Full spectrum is a marketing ploy, not a good technical description.


CRI is based on an arbitrary scale where natural sunlight has a value of 100 at rendering colors accurately; 100 is as good as it gets. Remember daylight has a CCT of around 5000K? Paradoxically, an incandescing incandescent bulb does a pretty good job mimicking the full spectral energy distribution of the sun, so they have an assigned CRI of 100, with a CCT of around 2700K. But remember CRI and CCT are entirely independent of each other in artificial light sources.



All the other artificial light sources we have fall short of incandescents in their CRI. Fluorescents and LEDs are available with CRIs in the mid-90's, which is actually pretty good; most people can't tell any difference. Higher CRI is always better, but we pay more for higher CRI, and it is worth some extra money for the light quality if we are doing task lighting or spending a lot of time under it. Residential fluorescents and LEDs are available with CRIs under 60, which is terrible. CRIs at 80-90 aren't bad, and probably fine for ambient lighting. Many of the cheap fluorescents we labored under for years have CRIs in the 70s.


It is often hard to find CRI numbers on the packaging, so we have to look for them on the insert or ask the seller to give us the specs for the lamp. It often seems like if the manufacturer is not proud of the CRI, it will be hard to find.



Just to add to the fun, IESNA is introducing a new TM-30-15 standard where the CRI metric will be replaced by two separate metrics and a graphic: CRI will be replaced by Rf, but the numbers will be pretty similar. Fidelity index (Rf), which is basically an updated CRI between 8 and 99.


One big question here is: What kind of light should we be using? Natural sunlight is best, and essential for our health. Getting out in the sun daily is very important, just don't get a sunburn. Check out the cutting edge health and fitness search engine at www.mercola.com

LED lighting is so incredibly energy efficient and long-lived it has literally changed the way we think about the costs and environmental consequences of good lighting. Incandescent lighting is 90% heat and 10% light and burns out quickly, so it wastes most of the energy we pay for, but based on my reading it is probably the healthiest artificial light to spend a lot of time under, especially at night. Avoiding blue light sources like computer screens at night can help us sleep better. Free apps like IRIS are available to change the CCT of our computer screen based on the time of day. Does it make sense to use incandescent task lighting in winter when the daylight is short and we are inside using the heat a lot, and use LEDs the brighter half of the year, April to September, when the AC may be on? I try to spend more time outside during daylight and use 2700K LEDs except in the shop/garage. Certainly the more we can use natural daylight the better for us and our Earth.

[Tug Hercules]

ARVZ,

Thank You; that is one of the better descriptions that i have seen. Very informative

Thank you for posting.

[Raz]

Yes, very good post.