Should you install warm white in your home? Or should you go for cool white? Selecting the right lighting for a home is seldom easy. And often we pick one or the other without giving a thought to how we plan to use a particular room.
Here’s the thing: Different rooms in your house have different requirements. The lighting that will suit a master bedroom isn’t likely to work in a kitchen.
Before you start shopping for new home lighting, consider two things:
- Which rooms you really want to light up?
- How can you light up these spaces in the most effective manner?
Picking the right home lighting is crucial, and you can count on us to help you out. In this post, we’ll help you pick between warm and cool white LED light.
Different Home Spaces Need Different Lighting
As said before, lighting you use for a particular room should be appropriate for the activities that will take place there. For this reason, you should consider the lighting needs of each room in your house separately.
Broadly speaking, we need either warm or cool white LED light for our rooms. Some spaces require warm white LED light, while others need cool white light.
Warm white or cool white light
Warm white or cool white light refers to the colour temperature — measured in Kelvin (K) — of the light. In other words, it refers to how we perceive the emitted light.
Human eyes perceive warm light as an amber tone, much similar to the colour of good old incandescent bulbs, which hardly anyone uses anymore because they waste a nearly 80-90% of electricity they consume.
Warm light is more suitable for those rooms where we would like a cozy ambience, like a living room or a bedroom. This type of light creates warmth, and in turn makes spaces seem relaxing and cozy. But that’s not all. Warm white light can also aptly highlight architectural details such as decorations.
By contrast, the human eye perceives cool light like blue tones. Cool warm light works wonderfully well in work areas, where clarity is the key requirement.
For instance, a study, kitchen, garage, or work-home office room are all good candidates for cool white lighting. You can also use them in bathrooms. Cool warm light aids better concentration.
Another important thing to keep in mind is that you can use both together as well. As a matter of fact, using warm white and cool white lights together in the right manner can help prevent irritating shadows. It can also help ensure that there’s not too much light in a particular area.
Conclusion
Warm white light works well in bedrooms and living rooms. Cool white light, on the other hand, is more suitable for areas where you want to clearly see what you are doing, like a kitchen or a garage. In multi-purpose areas, you can even use both for creating a better ambience.
Frequently asked questions
Is white light good for bedroom?
Soft white light (2,700 – 3,000K) is an excellent choice for bedrooms. This light creates a warm and cozy atmosphere, which in turn suits living rooms, bedroom, and dens.
Can you mix warm and cool white?
Of course, you can. In fact, experts recommend you use them together in certain spaces, like a kitchen. Warm light in a kitchen can look great during daytime (especially if your kitchen gets a bit of sunlight), but at night you can switch them off and use cool white for greater clarity.
What color light is closest to sunlight?
If you want LED bulbs that emit light similar to sunlight, pay attention to colour rendering index or CRI. It is measured on a scale of 1 to 100, and the higher the rating, the better the quality of light. So a bulb with a CRI close to 100 will give you light that closely mimics daylight. For this reason, we recommend you to buy LED bulbs with a CRI 90+ rating.