Shop Lighting - Poll - Color Temperature Preference

[LCHIEN]

I do find I prefer cool white over warm white and daylight for my shop lighting. The last LEDs I bought were rated 4000 K



What's your preference?

[leehljp]

My preference for light color got defined when I started turning pens. Light color (K) changed the perceived color of the woods used. In most finished furniture, the exact tone, hue or what ever is not a major problem. But in pens with segments in it, being able to determine the exact tone or hue makes the difference between just a "good color match" and one that jumps out.

Applying a light amber oil base finish over bloodwood will cause the bloodwood to have a hint of burnt orange tone. Light amber oil based finish will make a very white holly to have a hint of ivory tone. 2700-3400K specifically, and even 3400-4200 will prevent one from being able to detect the amount of tone shift, but if in the daylight even on a cloudy day, the ivory tone on holly and burnt orange tone on bloodwood will be evident.

4200 - 5000K reveal more of a True Tone of daylight. That is what I use for checking to see the colors of my pens when making them. They are critical when using woods like Purple Heart and a few others that tend to shift their colors rather quickly.

Personally, beyond 5000K the light does something psychologically to me. , Kinda gives me a headache after extended period of time - 30 minutes or more,

[mm1992]

I've found that 3500-4000K looks the best to me. Unfortunately that's not terribly common for most light bulbs I've seen, but my shop lights came in at 4000K. Other than that we run 5000K for our first floor lights and 2700K for the second floor. Once it gets late the first floor lights can be a little harsh, so I'm hoping I can get a color changing LED strip to mount behind our TV to backlight the TV and make it all a bit easier on our eyes.

[Carlos]

I have a wide variety in the shop, because I had various strips and bulbs sitting around. And at one point I was given somewhere around 20-30 LED bulbs, so I bought a 7-to-1 bulb adapter and they all hang from a pre-existing single bulb fixture. Warm is nice for just casually being in the shop, but not good to see details. The hot white ones (6k) are too much as overall light, but good at showing strong detail. I don't like them as general lighting but I have a 6k over a hobby bench upstairs where I deal with small electronics, RC planes, and the like. The middle range, around 4500-5000, would be my choice if I were buying all new. My favorites are Honeywell LED shop light fixtures from Sam's Club, which are right at 5k, and disperse light very evenly. $20, so dirt cheap too.

[leehljp]

Carlos mentioned something that affects lighting in specific situations:
"My favorites are Honeywell LED shop light fixtures from Sam's Club, which are right at 5k, and disperse light very evenly. $20, so dirt cheap too."

Some overhead 4ft LED lights come with diffuser covers. In some cases (and with pens) the diffuser will cause a thousand reflections on super fine (smooth) finishes and hampers the ability to see slight imperfections that will be more noticeable in natural light.

Also some LED Lights are not totally linear from one end to the other, i.e. square Cree type dots every 1/2 inch or so. These too will reflect back on smooth finishes with lots of reflection points, again diminishing the ability to see imperfections in a smooth finish.

As an example, look at the pen below (from the pen turning forum):
1. On the side, there is one continuous "whitish" streak that is light reflection. Look how smooth it is,
2. On the top, look at the white streak on it. VERY smooth reflection.Z
https://www.penturners.org/threads/progress.163965/

Cree type dot lights will appear as dot reflections; diffused light will do the same and imperfections will be hard to detect. The difference between a pen with this kind of perfection and one with a few imperfections exposed in natural daylight - is the difference of several hundred dollars in high end markets. Light matters.

[Carlos]

Interesting points. A refractive diffuser would probably be a really bad idea with LEDs as pointed out. A frosted diffuser is fine though; I have a ceiling fan with an LED ring and frosted diffuser that just looks like a soft white bulb with a globe. The Sam's lights have no diffuser. Just two clear tubes, with evenly spaced LED chips along it.

Also my ceilings are just over 10 feet so I have more space for light to diffuse.

I nearly always work with the garage door open, so I needed to put lighting on the door itself. I hung lightweight 3' LED strips from the door. I ran the 12v line for them via an umbilical to the ceiling so the door can open and close. I did 3000K lights at first, thinking it would show projects as they will appear in normal indoor lighting. My assembly and main work table is right under them. But it's not good enough to see detail, so I then added some 5700K strips to the door and that's much better (the two combine to average out in between). Can't have too much light over there. I'm considering adding two more of those strips, but will need a larger 12v power supply.

[mpc]

I'm learning a lot reading the reasons "why" you folks have your specific color temp lights in your shops. I haven't voted as my shop mostly has a mix of florescent lights - the two 8 footers left by the prior owners of this house and some 4-footers I added. Not bright enough really; I've been shopping LED replacement fixtures for quite some time now. My original thoughts were to go with something closer to the "warm" end of the color scale - 2700K to 3000K - to be similar to what's in the house so I could judge finish colors as Carlos noted. Most common LED fixtures, especially the less expensive ones in big box stores, tend to be 5000K or higher and I know I don't want something that high. Those tend to hurt my eyeballs in the stores fairly quickly and, when I put my hand and shirt sleeve under the sample lights to see the color effect it is horrid looking! I'm very used to the various tool colors in my shop right now... if they "changed" because of bluish light tints it'd just "feel wrong" to me forever. So I've come to the conclusion that something around 3500K to 4100K with a 85+ CRI is what I wanted. That seems to jive with what some of you have already posted as being pretty good. I have a few windows in my shop so checking stuff in natural daylight colors is readily do-able too. For raking light, I have the Ryobi LED 18volt portable light that has the color temp control on it; it's actually quite useful. Borg link: Ryobi LED Color Range Work Light. The color range is 2700K to 5000K at 1200, 700, or 100 Lumens output using a handful of CREE LEDs. It's also my go-to light for digging through dark closets, working on/underneath cars, etc. I noticed though that it seems to discharge the battery even when OFF; I'm in the habit now of removing the battery when it's not in use. It'll take 120volt AC power too.

Another requirement of mine is that the LED segments be direct current driven even if the lamp assembly is plugged into the AC mains. I want no flicker below 500Hz. Florescent and cheaper LED units flicker at 60 or 120 Hz which is beyond the range most folks can perceive... but some epileptics are sensitive to those frequencies. Incandescent bulbs, since they work by heat, don't flicker in sync with the power frequency as thermal mass/damping makes their response rate far slower than 60 hertz line frequency. I have friends that suffer from epilepsy and don't want my shop to cause problems if/when they visit in the future. My current florescent fixtures have to go before they become shop regulars. Or if/when the visit my house for that matter which is why it has yet to be converted to LED fixtures from old fashioned bulbs.

mpc

[twistsol]

I typically use 2700k lights in the shop because it's just a personal preference. 5000k lighting reminds me too much of my work environment under fluorescent lights. When finishing I have a couple of floor stand LED lights at 5000k. They are good as raking lights to see any flaws in the finish but I never thought about the color temperature and how it affects how I perceive the finish itself.

Great poll and lots of good discussion info about which to think.

[leehljp]

One other thing that has not been mentioned: Photography in the Shop (or home). There is nothing more aggravating than a nice pen or bowl (particularly segmented pen/bowl of different woods) taken in "warm" light. Since most photos like this are not "professional", I think most people give little thought to it. But it sure does take away from the purpose of showing off a nice bowl or pen when it is "yellowish" or "Amber". It makes the bowl/pen look "average" at the very best. I have a coffee mug that my son in law made me, and I took the picture in "warm" light. It took me a few minutes to figure out what was wrong with the photo. See Photo below

Very very few people know how to compensate in photography for the lighting, but it can be done. I have a mixture of 4100 and 5000 in my shop. I started off with 4100 and placed them over my lathe. Since I do a fair amount of holly and bloodwood, I noticed quickly that the tones were off. So I moved the 4100 to the center of the shop and put 5000 over the lathe.

Photo of two "wood" mugs and one giant mug in "warm" light in the house. Giant mug story: I told my son in law years ago that when I get old and the doctor tells me that I can have only one cup of coffee a day, I wanted a mug of coffee that would last all day. SIL made me one!

[Rslaugh]

Depending on what type of camera you are using you can adjust white balance after the fact allowing you to take a picture in a warm light like 5400 and cool it down by adjusting the white balance in post processing. You can even do this with a smart phone pic and the Lightroom app.

[Carlos]

The current iPhone with three cameras does a spectacular job of white balance in almost any light, particularly if you include something white for it to reference. My shop tops are white so they work. If there's no white, I just hold a piece of paper near the object and crop it out later. But yeah, flat lighting and brownish lighting really take the visual quality down a lot.

I've been into photography as a hobby all my life, and for a while I was a semi-pro doing weddings and events. I also used to be a photographer for an adult web site, in the 90s.

[cwsmith]

I used to use "cool white" florescent's in the garage and shop, and although they are still available, I decided to go the LED route a year or so ago. Initially, the market around here only offered 5000K which seemed even hotter to me, more like 6000K. Plus, most all of them were LED strips contained within clear tubes which I found to be particularly harsh and glaring. Okay for the garage, but in the shop the glare was quite bothersome to me.

This past summer, I converted the shop to 4000 K LED shop lights from Sunco, purchased thru Amazon (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...?ie=UTF8&psc=1). They're relatively cheap with non-replaceable bulbs (basically frosted plastic tubes with the hard-wired LED strips inside. They work well for my vision and are without the harsh glare previously mentioned.

Regarding the photography challenge, I am well aware. I started doing the in-plant photography back in the mid-70's at the Painted Post compressor plant (used to be the largest compressor plant in the world). Over the years the shop assembly and machining area lighting was converted to tungsten-iodine which were bright but quite orange in their illumination. The office areas were an assortment of florescent's, depending on their age.

So going out to take some pictures was always a challenge and back in those 'film' days I'd carry a few rolls of 'daylight' and "tungsten" Ektachrome for which I'd process (E6) myself). In addition, I would also carry a few color-correction lens filters to fit the conditions as close as possible. Otherwise, my shots with just 'daylight' film would look orange- or green-tinted, the exception being if I was taking a shot outdoors in the yard.

Most all of my photography was in 35 mm transparency format for presentation at meetings and conferences, but then there was the monochrome (B&W) photography I needed for manuals and other service literature that I was responsible for. For the latter, the lighting didn't matter much because I would use multiple flashes and often retouch them after processing as necessary. For almost everything I would carry a 'gray card' and on the back of that (which was white), I had taped red, yellow, and blue colors.

So my typical procedure in any shop or office area, would be to first take a light metering off the gray card, then shoot the white side with it's color markings. That way, after processing the film, it could be color matched in print with the enlarger or similarly with slides when the duplicate was made.

With today's modern digital camera's all that fuss is taken care by technology. You can of course still go through the process of using filters to change the color temperature, but really most camera's have a 'white-balance' adjustment built in... or so that's been my experience. Not sure about i-phones and others, but the few pictures I've seen are pretty impressive. (I'll check that out on my cheap cell phone and see what it has.)

As mentioned in other posts, I just finished scanning more than 5,000 old family slides, and in that process I color-corrected quite a number of them; mostly because of aging. But the same process can be done bringing your photos into your computer where they can be light corrected if necessary.

March 1st Additional comment:

I wanted to add a further comment regarding "white balance". While I realize there are fully adjustable features on my Canon 80D for white balance, I decided to check on some of my older or less expensive cameras. Even my older Nikon 995 (2002) has selections and adjustments for white balance. Checking my rather cheap Samsung 3 Express cell phone's camera, I note that for the first several seconds the picture is as the ambient light renders it, but then kicks in the white balance feature automatically. That may be adjustable, but I don't see that option.

Looking at my little pocket-sized cheapy's, the Kodak "Play-full" appears to have auto-white balance with no selection or adjustment features and the really cheap ($30) Emerson has a menu selection to set it. Both of these are camera/video pocket camera's.


CWS

[dbhost]

I use Daylight white tubes. In progress converting from flourescent to LED lighting. Trying to improve light reliability and reduce energy use...

I've been using the direct swap in, no rewire necessary LED tubes from Costco to do the job. One fixture at a time.

[leehljp]

I use Daylight white tubes. In progress converting from flourescent to LED lighting. Trying to improve light reliability and reduce energy use...

I've been using the direct swap in, no rewire necessary LED tubes from Costco to do the job. One fixture at a time.

QUESTION: if NO rewiring, can't the ballasts still burn out?
I can't seem to find an answer to that.

[capncarl]

Yes. Retrofitting an existing ballast driven fluorescent light leaves the used ballast that has an unknown numbers of hours run time on it. Some ballasts last many many years without a failure, some not so many. The 4’ fluorescent fixtures in my shop lost a ballast about every 2 years. I have lost one ballast since changing over to LED. I’m thinking these ballast will last a lot longer now because of the reduced start and operating load. The direct swap LED tubes have an electronic device in them to accept the height voltage from the ballast, and that will probably go out before the old ballast does...... I hope.

[LCHIEN]

I think the electronic ballasts have a much longer lifetime than then old big black heavy magnetic ballasts.
If you have recent (meaning 10 years or so?) fluorescent fixtures they are probably T8 with electronic ballasts. All my T12 lights with magnetic ballasts have long been replaced and the T12 with electronic ballasts have all died, too, save for one I have inverted (pointing up) in my study for indirect lighting that is 25 or 27 years old, magnetic and still going.... hmmm. Probably it never gets hot to the 90+ temperatures regularly seen in the Garage here in Houston.