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Essentially any LED bulb that you can buy is a blue diode with a down conversion phosphor. The composition of the phosphor, and the relative amount of blue ligh
by phasetransition 10y ago
Essentially any LED bulb that you can buy is a blue diode with a down conversion phosphor. The composition of the phosphor, and the relative amount of blue light vs. phosphor emissions shape our perception of color temperature for these LED sources.
Due to an effect called metamerism, our brains can perceive the same apparent color from sources with different underlying spectral power distributions (power vs. wavelength).
So in a sense, the color temperature of a black body does not have much underlying connection with the spectral power distribution of LED lamps.
With that substantial caveat, the lower the correlated color temperature of the bulbs that you purchase, the less of the overall spectral power is from the diode, and the more from the phosphors.
If there ends up being a link to blue light exposure for circadian effects then bulbs with lower CCT that have more emission from the phosphors are the safer bet.
- jacobolus 10y agoSome LEDs have phosphors which almost entirely absorb the light from the diode.
- theatrus2 10y agoFor example, Lumileds PC Amber and Lime LEDs employ this trick. They're usually used as a corrective color component and not the main lumen source.
- phasetransition 10y agoI've not seen the PC Amber data from Lumileds, but I can vouch that their lime color LED has no blue diode emission peak visible in the spectra.