While the color temperature situation has improved, the actual spectral quality of most consumer LED lighting still leaves a lot to be desired. CRI makes an effort to measure this, although it's a low-granularity measurement.
I personally buy surplus cinema lighting equipment and use it to light my house. I have a bunch of fancy cinematic LEDs with high CRIs that produce decent light, although they still can't fully compete with tungsten bulbs (e.g. Arrilite series)
Ideally you want to be looking for something with a color temperature in the 3500K (mid-morning) to 6500K (clear blue noon day) range and a CRI of 95+. Also bug manufacturers to start using better color quality metrics like TM-30.
Just get modules or strip from Yuju; I have zero bad experience over many years with them.
Sure, it's not cheap, but IMO ~1$/W plus simple PSU (either some standard voltage, or dimmable current, depending on what you got) for good and 1.5~2$/W for very good CRI is quite fine.
Yep. I’ve been replacing all the bulbs in my house with Yuji SunWave, and the difference is astonishing. I just put in four of their PAR30 4000K bulbs above my kitchen island, and the first time I turned the lights on at night I gasped at how much it looked like sunlight. (Then again, my wife said she couldn’t tell much of a difference and suggested my reaction was possibly confirmation bias, so YMMV.)
They’re quite expensive compared to normal LED bulbs, but it’s hard to argue against the quality of life improvement, particularly in the winter where I work remotely from a home office all day.
I was actually considering setting up an high brightness array of their full spectrum lighting above my desk. I know the article mentions diffuse lighting is best, but for some odd reason I prefer “spotlight” style. I don’t know why—it just feels cozier to me.
One thing I’ve noticed as I’ve learned more about lighting is that the brighter the light, the better cool color temperatures start to look. For a long time I hated anything above 3000K (too “office-like”) but 4000K actually starts looking pretty good around ~7,000 lumens directly overhead, and I imagine 5000K would look alright above 15,000 lumens or so (perceived brightness is a logarithmic function of luminance). IMO 5000K looks downright ghastly in a home setting for the typical range of 500-800 lumens that most bulbs sell at nowadays.
Craigslist. I just have a bunch of alerts for various cinema lighting brands (among other industrial goods I like using in my house, like pelican cases).
For mounting, it depends. Some things, like Pavotubes, come with screw-in mounting solutions. Other stuff may require dedicated photo mounting hardware. Manfrotto Superclamps and similar are a great way to mount lights to random pipes, beams, etc.
Also, most cinema lighting supports DMX control, which is nice for automation. It's harder to set up than Zigbee, but it works a lot better once you get it set up. That bit is definitely not consumer-friendly though.
Also, MediaLight provide great high CRI options bias lighting for your TV or monitor, further reducing your eyestrain when watching TV at night: https://www.biaslighting.com/
Ah mate, I'd settle for manufacturers to even publish colour quality of there lights, even if it's just CRI. At least here in NZ, like 99% of the consumer lights say nothing about colour quality, and many are pretty average (not to mention flicker).
If you're patient, it's crazy how much money you can save off of new pricing. I frequently see discounts north of 75% off new price for stuff in pretty good condition.
I personally buy surplus cinema lighting equipment and use it to light my house. I have a bunch of fancy cinematic LEDs with high CRIs that produce decent light, although they still can't fully compete with tungsten bulbs (e.g. Arrilite series)
Ideally you want to be looking for something with a color temperature in the 3500K (mid-morning) to 6500K (clear blue noon day) range and a CRI of 95+. Also bug manufacturers to start using better color quality metrics like TM-30.