3 ms·

I just went through this with my car. All the OEM overhead interior lights were horrible 6000k+ type bulbs that not only made the interior feel like a hospital

I just went through this with my car. All the OEM overhead interior lights were horrible 6000k+ type bulbs that not only made the interior feel like a hospital room but completely ruined my night vision turning me into the classic “Jesus!! You’re going to kill someone!” dad whenever my kids would fiddle with them at night. I cannot overstate how much of a difference it made switching them all to 3000k warm whites. Of course instead of being replaceable bulbs they were all SMDs directly soldered onto little PCBs making it a bit of a project … but so worth it!

walterbell 2y ago
Well done! How did you figure out 3000K replacement part numbers for each SMD?
- gehwartzen 2y ago
  I happened to find someone on a German forum (cars a VW) that had taken his overheads apart to do the same thing who posted a p/n or rather an industry size. I had never dealt with replacing SMD LEDs before but it seems there is an industry standard sizing that most adhere to. Just ordered a few in that size from Amazon and they worked. From what I remember most in that size were rated for similar voltages so seemed pretty universal. I imagine as long as you can see the led and measure its dimensions finding a replacement should be easy. Desoldering/soldering was a pain as they were tiny; like 2mmx2mm. One cool thing I learned though is that you can use a multimeter in its ‘continuity’ setting to provide enough current to light up these small LEDs which is very convenient when testing if you soldered them correctly. https://www.zgsm-china.com/blog/something-you-should-know-about-leds.html https://www.zgsm-china.com/blog/something-you-should-know-ab... https://www.reddit.com/r/Tiguan/comments/1hq2hae/changed_overhead_light_to_a_warm_white_3000k_led/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Tiguan/comments/1hq2hae/changed_ove...
  - pkolaczk 2y ago
    Desoldering / resoldering is not pain if you have proper tools to do it and know the correct technique. Trying to do it with an iron is making things very hard or even impossible (especially for smds with contacts below not at the sides). Using hot air rework station + preheater and low melt solder paste is the way to go - and it’s a piece of cake then. And you can do the whole board at once in a few minutes. I modded most LEDs in my house because 2700-3000K is too warm for me, but 4000K is too cool. So I mix them ;)
    - gehwartzen 2y ago
      Oh that’s good to know! Yeah, I definitely didn’t do myself any favors trying it with just a cheap unadjustable iron. I didn’t so much desolder the existing LEDs but instead just melted/scraped them off and cleaned the contacts. Was ugly for sure. Do you by chance have any resources (videos or tutorials) to recommend that show how this is best done?
- tecleandor 2y ago
  I'm about to order a bunch of PCBs to substitute overhead lights on my car and some of my friends for something around 3000K and high CRI. Not only the color temperature is so cold, but usually the spectrum is terrible, and the quality of the light is awful. I just have to finish choosing the led driver :P
  - walterbell 2y ago
    > some of my friends Lucky friends! Maybe repair shops could offer customized interior lighting as an aftermarket service.
    - tecleandor 2y ago
      Thing is, when you order a small PCB, the price difference between 1 and 20units is usually negligible, so I'd try to find the light sizes for all my friends cars :D Truth is, aftermarket lights for cars (typical AliExpress or Amazon stuff) always focus on brightness, but never on quality. It's usual for taxi drivers to have aftermarket lights in the vehicle, so you can find your money or credit card more easily, but the light quality is always terrible. :P
teslabox 2y ago
The bad LEDs can also be improved with yellow or amber film, which is more accessible to most people than desoldering. I found a German company that sent me a free sample of their amber film. As I recall their market was semiconductor manufacturing, but I can’t find them again. Amazon has a variety of films that should work.
- gehwartzen 2y ago
  Absolutely! That was my initial idea as well. Glad to know it’s an option
  - gsck 2y ago
    If you look towards companies like Rosco or Lee they have hundreds of options for just this application. A sheet of Rosco 3408 takes you from about 5500K to 3800K so a much warmer colour. A small sheet which should be enough goes for about £7 https://shopwl.com/rosco-roscolux-3408-roscosun-1-2-cto/ https://shopwl.com/rosco-roscolux-3408-roscosun-1-2-cto/ you can probably find it cheaper just by searching Rosco 3408
imp0cat 2y ago
How do you feel about LED headlights (assuming your car has them)? Great for safety or too bright and tiring?
- close04 2y ago
  Not OP but I think it can be either. Great for the safety of one driver who can see the road perfectly can be awful for the safety of another who is blinded. LED bulbs exacerbate an already existing problem caused by vehicle noses being too tall such that the headlight is exactly eye-height for other drivers. Sometimes they're poorly calibrated too, aiming too high. Many drivers also retrofit super bright LED lights on older cars that do a very bad job at properly focusing the beam on the ground (same thing was happening with drivers modding their old mirror reflector headlights with xenon lamps and giving everyone on the road an artists impression of a supernova up-close). I've seen cars with lights that were obviously very bright but very well calibrated to point as much as possible to the road instead of my eyes. Those are maybe marginally more tiring than the warmer and much dimmer lights used in the past, but this is more than compensated in safety so probably a worthwhile trade. Proper calibration and sensible placing make all the difference.
  - ropejumper 2y ago
    The cold LED headlights also strain your eyes more as the driver. It's much less comfortable to look at IMO.
    - close04 2y ago
      Unfortunately I can't compare between 2 modern cars equipped with similar lights save for the color temperature. I haven't seen modern LED headlights with warm color, so when I think of warm color headlights my brain immediately goes to my experience with cars as old as the mid '70s, with filament bulbs. This evokes memories of almost blindly searching for the road right in front of me, compared to today's "I can see 200m ahead". So by this measure, not having to squint to see anything ahead, my (aging) eyes feel much more rested and reassured today than decades ago. Are there new cars with warm LED lights?
davidmurdoch 2y ago
This is the level of obsession I aspire to reach one day. I love it! I own a 90s BMW and the interior lighting looks phenomenal in that car. Not great for passenger night reading or applying makeup though. Haha
ssl-3 2y ago
I've become somewhat expert at identifying cheap prefabulated automotive LED modules on AliExpress that seem unlikely to be problematic, and modifying them to be something other than awful and stupid. It seems like such needless work. All I want are ~3000k LED widgets in various standard-automotive sizes that aren't stupid. What I get are ~3000k LED widgets that are overdriven and painful to be around at night, which also have extra "CANBUS" resistors that only serve as heaters. It's all pretty repulsive. Some recentl examples I got consumed 2.6 Watts, and about half of that was deliberately wasted as nothing but heat. (2.6 Watts is quite a lot for a little LED board to dissipate, which results in early failures and flickering and other nonsense.) But with the stupid heater-resistors removed, that dropped to only an eye-burning 1.3 Watts. With the current-limiting resistor swapped to a higher value, power consumption was reduced to a few hundred mW and the light output approximated the relatively-unintrusive incandescent lamp that was originally fitted. And finally, after all of that work of finding and modding the things, I can open the car door at night without becoming blind -- just like it was the 1990s again -- and also preserve the battery for things like starting the engine.
thanhhaimai 2y ago
I'm curious what is the percentage of the population that prefers 3000k warm light. I personally disliked it. My mind constantly notices the distortion in color accuracy, and it's an unpleasant feeling. My preference is 5000k "day" light.

walterbell 2y ago

Well done! How did you figure out 3000K replacement part numbers for each SMD?

gehwartzen 2y ago
I happened to find someone on a German forum (cars a VW) that had taken his overheads apart to do the same thing who posted a p/n or rather an industry size. I had never dealt with replacing SMD LEDs before but it seems there is an industry standard sizing that most adhere to. Just ordered a few in that size from Amazon and they worked. From what I remember most in that size were rated for similar voltages so seemed pretty universal. I imagine as long as you can see the led and measure its dimensions finding a replacement should be easy. Desoldering/soldering was a pain as they were tiny; like 2mmx2mm. One cool thing I learned though is that you can use a multimeter in its ‘continuity’ setting to provide enough current to light up these small LEDs which is very convenient when testing if you soldered them correctly. https://www.zgsm-china.com/blog/something-you-should-know-about-leds.html https://www.zgsm-china.com/blog/something-you-should-know-ab... https://www.reddit.com/r/Tiguan/comments/1hq2hae/changed_overhead_light_to_a_warm_white_3000k_led/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Tiguan/comments/1hq2hae/changed_ove...
- pkolaczk 2y ago
  Desoldering / resoldering is not pain if you have proper tools to do it and know the correct technique. Trying to do it with an iron is making things very hard or even impossible (especially for smds with contacts below not at the sides). Using hot air rework station + preheater and low melt solder paste is the way to go - and it’s a piece of cake then. And you can do the whole board at once in a few minutes. I modded most LEDs in my house because 2700-3000K is too warm for me, but 4000K is too cool. So I mix them ;)
  - gehwartzen 2y ago
    Oh that’s good to know! Yeah, I definitely didn’t do myself any favors trying it with just a cheap unadjustable iron. I didn’t so much desolder the existing LEDs but instead just melted/scraped them off and cleaned the contacts. Was ugly for sure. Do you by chance have any resources (videos or tutorials) to recommend that show how this is best done?
tecleandor 2y ago
I'm about to order a bunch of PCBs to substitute overhead lights on my car and some of my friends for something around 3000K and high CRI. Not only the color temperature is so cold, but usually the spectrum is terrible, and the quality of the light is awful. I just have to finish choosing the led driver :P
- walterbell 2y ago
  > some of my friends Lucky friends! Maybe repair shops could offer customized interior lighting as an aftermarket service.
  - tecleandor 2y ago
    Thing is, when you order a small PCB, the price difference between 1 and 20units is usually negligible, so I'd try to find the light sizes for all my friends cars :D Truth is, aftermarket lights for cars (typical AliExpress or Amazon stuff) always focus on brightness, but never on quality. It's usual for taxi drivers to have aftermarket lights in the vehicle, so you can find your money or credit card more easily, but the light quality is always terrible. :P

teslabox 2y ago

The bad LEDs can also be improved with yellow or amber film, which is more accessible to most people than desoldering. I found a German company that sent me a free sample of their amber film. As I recall their market was semiconductor manufacturing, but I can’t find them again. Amazon has a variety of films that should work.

gehwartzen 2y ago
Absolutely! That was my initial idea as well. Glad to know it’s an option
- gsck 2y ago
  If you look towards companies like Rosco or Lee they have hundreds of options for just this application. A sheet of Rosco 3408 takes you from about 5500K to 3800K so a much warmer colour. A small sheet which should be enough goes for about £7 https://shopwl.com/rosco-roscolux-3408-roscosun-1-2-cto/ https://shopwl.com/rosco-roscolux-3408-roscosun-1-2-cto/ you can probably find it cheaper just by searching Rosco 3408

imp0cat 2y ago

How do you feel about LED headlights (assuming your car has them)? Great for safety or too bright and tiring?

close04 2y ago
Not OP but I think it can be either. Great for the safety of one driver who can see the road perfectly can be awful for the safety of another who is blinded. LED bulbs exacerbate an already existing problem caused by vehicle noses being too tall such that the headlight is exactly eye-height for other drivers. Sometimes they're poorly calibrated too, aiming too high. Many drivers also retrofit super bright LED lights on older cars that do a very bad job at properly focusing the beam on the ground (same thing was happening with drivers modding their old mirror reflector headlights with xenon lamps and giving everyone on the road an artists impression of a supernova up-close). I've seen cars with lights that were obviously very bright but very well calibrated to point as much as possible to the road instead of my eyes. Those are maybe marginally more tiring than the warmer and much dimmer lights used in the past, but this is more than compensated in safety so probably a worthwhile trade. Proper calibration and sensible placing make all the difference.
- ropejumper 2y ago
  The cold LED headlights also strain your eyes more as the driver. It's much less comfortable to look at IMO.
  - close04 2y ago
    Unfortunately I can't compare between 2 modern cars equipped with similar lights save for the color temperature. I haven't seen modern LED headlights with warm color, so when I think of warm color headlights my brain immediately goes to my experience with cars as old as the mid '70s, with filament bulbs. This evokes memories of almost blindly searching for the road right in front of me, compared to today's "I can see 200m ahead". So by this measure, not having to squint to see anything ahead, my (aging) eyes feel much more rested and reassured today than decades ago. Are there new cars with warm LED lights?

davidmurdoch 2y ago

This is the level of obsession I aspire to reach one day. I love it! I own a 90s BMW and the interior lighting looks phenomenal in that car. Not great for passenger night reading or applying makeup though. Haha

ssl-3 2y ago

I've become somewhat expert at identifying cheap prefabulated automotive LED modules on AliExpress that seem unlikely to be problematic, and modifying them to be something other than awful and stupid. It seems like such needless work. All I want are ~3000k LED widgets in various standard-automotive sizes that aren't stupid. What I get are ~3000k LED widgets that are overdriven and painful to be around at night, which also have extra "CANBUS" resistors that only serve as heaters. It's all pretty repulsive. Some recentl examples I got consumed 2.6 Watts, and about half of that was deliberately wasted as nothing but heat. (2.6 Watts is quite a lot for a little LED board to dissipate, which results in early failures and flickering and other nonsense.) But with the stupid heater-resistors removed, that dropped to only an eye-burning 1.3 Watts. With the current-limiting resistor swapped to a higher value, power consumption was reduced to a few hundred mW and the light output approximated the relatively-unintrusive incandescent lamp that was originally fitted. And finally, after all of that work of finding and modding the things, I can open the car door at night without becoming blind -- just like it was the 1990s again -- and also preserve the battery for things like starting the engine.

thanhhaimai 2y ago

I'm curious what is the percentage of the population that prefers 3000k warm light. I personally disliked it. My mind constantly notices the distortion in color accuracy, and it's an unpleasant feeling. My preference is 5000k "day" light.