What Are The Advantages Of Using A Daylight Bulb?
What is daylight?
To understand what a daylight bulb is, we need to first understand what daylight is and how it is measured.
Daylight is essentially all the direct and in-direct light presented to us by the sun. Daylight has many different colours across its spectrum from infrared to ultra-violet and is measured in two ways
- By the colour of the light that we see, which can also be known as ‘colour warmth’ and is measured in Kelvins (K). When you see a bulb that is a warm yellow-orange colour like the Reverse Lamp on the right-hand side in the image, that is around 2700K, which is like the sun when it is on the horizon. Full daylight (similar to midday sun) is around 6500K and is a white-blue light like what you can see from the Reverse Lamp on the left-hand side of the image.
- Through the Colour Rendering Index (CRI), which measures a light sources spectrum, or its ability to produce colour. CRI is measured as a percentage, with the higher the percentage the higher its ability to reveal colours the same way that a natural light source would. This measurement is key for people who have a high desire for near exact colour matching.
As an example of this in action, most of us see a red rose as ‘red’ in colour. This is because a red rose absorbs all the colours of the suns light (which to the human eye appear white) other than red, which it reflects.
When a daylight lamp is placed next to the red rose in dissimilar lighting conditions to daylight, that red rose may look orange (or a less saturated red) if the CRI of the daylight bulb isn’t a high percentage, because it isn’t providing lighting simulation at a similar level to natural daylight.
What are daylight bulbs?
Daylight bulbs are designed for high levels of colour matching, and so have quite high CRI percentages. Advancements in LED technology have now got some LED bulbs as high as 85% CRI, making them ideal for lighting up office spaces, for artistry on a canvas or even cross-stitching.
Some of the lamps that are sold within our lighting range give you the ability to alter the colour warmth of the lamp. This is important if we use the lamp in the evening because if we saw 6500K daylight from our bulb at 10pm, right before we go to bed then it may impact our circadian rhythm and make it hard for us to switch off. Instead, as the sun goes down of an evening, start to adjust the warmth of the temperature that the lamp emits to 4000K or even 2700K as the sunsets.
Examples of lamps that provide adjustable colour warmth are –
- Chameleon Magnifier Lamp
- Chameleon Desk Magnifier
- Reverse Lamp
- Task Lamp
- Lumina Desk Lamp
- Lumina Floor Lamp
Who could use a daylight bulb?
If you are looking for a bulb that can enhance colour matching and give a strong performance at a range of colour temperatures, then a daylight bulb may be what you need.
A daylight lamp could be used as part of your toolset if you are –
- An architect or draughtsman
- A crafter
- A nail technician
- An artist
- A beautician
- An avid reader
- Work in inspection
- … plus many more roles which require levels of light that are similar to daylight, in order to improve accuracy and reduce strain on our eyes.
If you would like more information on stocking our LED daylight lamps then get in touch with us here.
Author
Clare Donnelly – Managing Director of Native Lighting. Clare has over 15 years of experience working in the lighting sector. She has previously written blogs for the Beauty industry and numerous articles for crafting magazines along with presenting on shopping channels, such as Hochanda.