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I absolutely hate LEDs. I don't know why, but I just hate them. Especially the white ones. The yellower are similar to a mid summer day and I can cope with the

I absolutely hate LEDs. I don't know why, but I just hate them. Especially the white ones. The yellower are similar to a mid summer day and I can cope with them, but there's always this feeling of something being off. I guess it's connected to us humans being used to non-sun light being (similar to) a fire - mainly consisting of yellow/orange tones. Also, I don't exactly remember from where I read this, but when a (town) changed the street lights to LED's, a lot of people started having sleep problems, and it supposedly was connected to the blue light emmiting properties of (lower quality?) LEDs.

AngryData 7y ago
Possibly due to the lights being driven from AC power making them pulse. You gotta find ones with big enough caps that they don't flicker, or buy some grow LEDs and a decent DC driver to emulate the sun.
bitexploder 7y ago
The flickering. It’s not nice.
- garmaine 7y ago
  LEDs do not flicker.
  - novok 7y ago
    Cheap led light systems do
    - mcv 7y ago
      Yeah, I get the impression there's a massive difference in quality between cheap and good LEDs, and it's not always easy to tell which is which. In theory, when done right, LEDs can have a perfect spectrum with no flicker. But many manufacturers cut corners.
wheels 7y ago
> I absolutely hate LEDs. I don't know why, but... I'm really interested in the why. Most people don't seem to care. My in-laws have CFLs in their living room that just feel horrible to me, but they're none the wiser. I'm very curious as to what it is in the light spectrum that seems to matter to some (small) class of people, myself, and it sounds like you, included. The word for "fire-like" light, used in my original comment, is "black-body radiation". Stars, fire and incandescent bulbs put out a similarly shaped spectrum. A few years ago there were scientists working on a black-body (i.e. incandescent) light bulb that reflected infrared emission back to heat the filament and re-emit as visible light making for a theoretically efficient incandescent bulb. I check every year or so to see if the research has been commercialized, but have always been disappointed: https://www.dezeen.com/2016/01/13/mit-energy-efficient-incandescent-light-bulb-research/ https://www.dezeen.com/2016/01/13/mit-energy-efficient-incan... Edit: Another point on the blueness of LEDs is that they seem to amplify macular degeneration, which has made my grandmother mostly blind, and I know based on gene sequencing that I have a more than 50% chance of developing. While most of my rejection of LEDs is based on them not looking nice to me, I am also worried about hurrying the onset of blindness in old age for persons like myself who carry the genes for macular degeneration: https://edition.cnn.com/2019/05/16/health/blue-light-led-health-effects-bn-trnd/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2019/05/16/health/blue-light-led-hea...
- marcosdumay 7y ago
  Well, fire does not shine by black-body radiation. Lamps try to emulate a black-body because that's what color standards dictate and labs test against, but fire has a very bad color resolution. (By the way, daylight isn't also like black-body radiation, but it's much closer than fire.) Personally, flickering makes me ill. I am used enough to 120Hz to survive it, but any other frequency is bad. Also, the 6400K LEDs look way too blue, much bluer than the Sun. That may be because I have a relatively rare kind of color blindness.
  - klyrs 7y ago
    > Well, fire does not shine by black-body radiation Flame, not entirely; embers, yes.
braindeath 7y ago
Unless you source high quality LED luminaires, they look terrible let alone flicker... most of the shit on amazon is just that unfortunately.
dzhiurgis 7y ago
I've recently got amber ones, at around 2000k and they are such a pleasure. Many of them look like classic incandescent bulb too, imitating wires in normal bulb.
mindfulhack 7y ago
I think it's the lack of heat (AKA infrared light) also reaching your body, which, when receiving bright visible light, is evolutionarily wired to expect heat coming from that same light source (e.g. the sun). Feels off for you to be cold and for it to be super bright. I'm currently experimenting with 'emulating outdoors' in my office environment for health and productivity, and so far I've started with an 8,000 lux fanless corn LED (bought off Amazon) hanging from the wall and it's brilliant. I immediately feel 'happier' when I turn it on in the morning, every single time, but after a while, I agree, something feels off. I feel 'cold', temperature-wise. I have read (no source for now, just from memory) that having bright white light indoors (e.g. fluorescent) without the presence of other light spectrum (including possibly natural UV) can actually increase cortisol. So I think that more than just visible light is needed to complete the picture. Careful, low enough levels of UV and infrared that doesn't point directly at you but more 'above' you like the sun itself, may be the optimum to get some benefits but not cause dangerous skin or eye problems.
yx827ha 7y ago
It might be the flicker. Most LED lights I've found have pretty bad flicker: https://youtu.be/eWut5Qx6mkM?t=285 https://youtu.be/eWut5Qx6mkM?t=285 Phones are pretty bad too. Check out the Nexus 5x vs Pixel 3: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1f7-ChF4zFiisFdmEZVEzhcX0p_WYdvjG?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1f7-ChF4zFiisFdmEZVEz... I found that Phillips non dimmable bulbs are the cheap and don't flicker.
- mrb 7y ago
  Same experience here. I film all the led bulbs I purchase in 240fps to see if they flicker at 60Hz. I discovered that Philips bulbs NEVER flicker. Occasionally I stumble upon other cheaper brands that don't flicker, but there is never any guarantee. I might buy 2 batches 6 months apart of bulbs from the same model from the same third party seller on Amazon, and they slightly changed the product (updated packaging and markings on the bulb) and one batch doesn't flicker whereas the other does... So I end up nowadays just buying Philips.
  - ars 7y ago
    A ton of LEDs flicker at 120hz which makes me crazy. It's like a strobe effect that I only see when moving.
    - galangalalgol 7y ago
      The Edison style are often like that. They use four led elements configured as a full wave bridge rectifier but because the diodes are themelves the load ther is no place to put the lowpass and so you get 120.
    - mrb 7y ago
      Oops I wrote 60Hz but meant 120Hz.
gdwatson 7y ago
My experience is that daylight-blue (5000K–6500K) LEDs or fluorescents feel unnatural unless they are quite bright; something in the animal part of my brain worries that the sun is broken. Low CRI bulbs also feel off, which makes intuitive sense I suppose. I've found that high CRI warm white (2700K) bulbs are the way to go for me. I have these at home, and I like them a lot: https://www.lowes.com/pd/GE-Relax-60-Watt-EQ-A19-Soft-White-Dimmable-LED-Light-Bulb-8-Pack/1000444903 https://www.lowes.com/pd/GE-Relax-60-Watt-EQ-A19-Soft-White-... . (I bought them at Home Depot, but it looks like they no longer sell them.)
- paulmendoza 7y ago
  You need more that 60 watt.
rhinoceraptor 7y ago
A lot of the LED bulbs out there are poor quality, they have bad CRI and they flicker. I’d be interested to know if you find high CRI LEDs better, especially warmer ones.

AngryData 7y ago

Possibly due to the lights being driven from AC power making them pulse. You gotta find ones with big enough caps that they don't flicker, or buy some grow LEDs and a decent DC driver to emulate the sun.

bitexploder 7y ago

The flickering. It’s not nice.

garmaine 7y ago
LEDs do not flicker.
- novok 7y ago
  Cheap led light systems do
  - mcv 7y ago
    Yeah, I get the impression there's a massive difference in quality between cheap and good LEDs, and it's not always easy to tell which is which. In theory, when done right, LEDs can have a perfect spectrum with no flicker. But many manufacturers cut corners.

wheels 7y ago

> I absolutely hate LEDs. I don't know why, but... I'm really interested in the why. Most people don't seem to care. My in-laws have CFLs in their living room that just feel horrible to me, but they're none the wiser. I'm very curious as to what it is in the light spectrum that seems to matter to some (small) class of people, myself, and it sounds like you, included. The word for "fire-like" light, used in my original comment, is "black-body radiation". Stars, fire and incandescent bulbs put out a similarly shaped spectrum. A few years ago there were scientists working on a black-body (i.e. incandescent) light bulb that reflected infrared emission back to heat the filament and re-emit as visible light making for a theoretically efficient incandescent bulb. I check every year or so to see if the research has been commercialized, but have always been disappointed: https://www.dezeen.com/2016/01/13/mit-energy-efficient-incandescent-light-bulb-research/ https://www.dezeen.com/2016/01/13/mit-energy-efficient-incan... Edit: Another point on the blueness of LEDs is that they seem to amplify macular degeneration, which has made my grandmother mostly blind, and I know based on gene sequencing that I have a more than 50% chance of developing. While most of my rejection of LEDs is based on them not looking nice to me, I am also worried about hurrying the onset of blindness in old age for persons like myself who carry the genes for macular degeneration: https://edition.cnn.com/2019/05/16/health/blue-light-led-health-effects-bn-trnd/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2019/05/16/health/blue-light-led-hea...

marcosdumay 7y ago
Well, fire does not shine by black-body radiation. Lamps try to emulate a black-body because that's what color standards dictate and labs test against, but fire has a very bad color resolution. (By the way, daylight isn't also like black-body radiation, but it's much closer than fire.) Personally, flickering makes me ill. I am used enough to 120Hz to survive it, but any other frequency is bad. Also, the 6400K LEDs look way too blue, much bluer than the Sun. That may be because I have a relatively rare kind of color blindness.
- klyrs 7y ago
  > Well, fire does not shine by black-body radiation Flame, not entirely; embers, yes.

braindeath 7y ago

Unless you source high quality LED luminaires, they look terrible let alone flicker... most of the shit on amazon is just that unfortunately.

dzhiurgis 7y ago

I've recently got amber ones, at around 2000k and they are such a pleasure. Many of them look like classic incandescent bulb too, imitating wires in normal bulb.

mindfulhack 7y ago

I think it's the lack of heat (AKA infrared light) also reaching your body, which, when receiving bright visible light, is evolutionarily wired to expect heat coming from that same light source (e.g. the sun). Feels off for you to be cold and for it to be super bright. I'm currently experimenting with 'emulating outdoors' in my office environment for health and productivity, and so far I've started with an 8,000 lux fanless corn LED (bought off Amazon) hanging from the wall and it's brilliant. I immediately feel 'happier' when I turn it on in the morning, every single time, but after a while, I agree, something feels off. I feel 'cold', temperature-wise. I have read (no source for now, just from memory) that having bright white light indoors (e.g. fluorescent) without the presence of other light spectrum (including possibly natural UV) can actually increase cortisol. So I think that more than just visible light is needed to complete the picture. Careful, low enough levels of UV and infrared that doesn't point directly at you but more 'above' you like the sun itself, may be the optimum to get some benefits but not cause dangerous skin or eye problems.

yx827ha 7y ago

It might be the flicker. Most LED lights I've found have pretty bad flicker: https://youtu.be/eWut5Qx6mkM?t=285 https://youtu.be/eWut5Qx6mkM?t=285 Phones are pretty bad too. Check out the Nexus 5x vs Pixel 3: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1f7-ChF4zFiisFdmEZVEzhcX0p_WYdvjG?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1f7-ChF4zFiisFdmEZVEz... I found that Phillips non dimmable bulbs are the cheap and don't flicker.

mrb 7y ago
Same experience here. I film all the led bulbs I purchase in 240fps to see if they flicker at 60Hz. I discovered that Philips bulbs NEVER flicker. Occasionally I stumble upon other cheaper brands that don't flicker, but there is never any guarantee. I might buy 2 batches 6 months apart of bulbs from the same model from the same third party seller on Amazon, and they slightly changed the product (updated packaging and markings on the bulb) and one batch doesn't flicker whereas the other does... So I end up nowadays just buying Philips.
- ars 7y ago
  A ton of LEDs flicker at 120hz which makes me crazy. It's like a strobe effect that I only see when moving.
  - galangalalgol 7y ago
    The Edison style are often like that. They use four led elements configured as a full wave bridge rectifier but because the diodes are themelves the load ther is no place to put the lowpass and so you get 120.
  - mrb 7y ago
    Oops I wrote 60Hz but meant 120Hz.

gdwatson 7y ago

My experience is that daylight-blue (5000K–6500K) LEDs or fluorescents feel unnatural unless they are quite bright; something in the animal part of my brain worries that the sun is broken. Low CRI bulbs also feel off, which makes intuitive sense I suppose. I've found that high CRI warm white (2700K) bulbs are the way to go for me. I have these at home, and I like them a lot: https://www.lowes.com/pd/GE-Relax-60-Watt-EQ-A19-Soft-White-Dimmable-LED-Light-Bulb-8-Pack/1000444903 https://www.lowes.com/pd/GE-Relax-60-Watt-EQ-A19-Soft-White-... . (I bought them at Home Depot, but it looks like they no longer sell them.)

paulmendoza 7y ago
You need more that 60 watt.

rhinoceraptor 7y ago

A lot of the LED bulbs out there are poor quality, they have bad CRI and they flicker. I’d be interested to know if you find high CRI LEDs better, especially warmer ones.