Indoor lighting

[dd99]

I've searched the forum, but can't find much on indoor lighting. I am moving to a new house which has halogen lighting in every room. Is that healthy? Are there better wavelength halogen bulbs I should replace the existing bulbs with? Or should I just go for a 'full-spectrum' bulb which tries to mimic daylight? (Although, as I'll only be using lights in the morning and evenings, shouldn't I get a bulb with as little blue as possible?)

Any ideas?

 

[LucyL]

Peat says LED lights are ok (I take to mean neutral). Downside is they are super expensive and lose their brightness very quickly. I use halogens and incandescents (though you would have had to stockpile those) and fluorescents in a couple fixtures we leave on 24/7. The 250W 130V heat lamps are great especially in the winter, if you could set up some fixtures for those in the main living areas of the home.

I remember Peat saying on halogens that there wasn't enough evidence yet to say if they were harmful long term or not.

 

[dd99]

Thanks, LucyL, that's very helpful. Have you noticed any issues with halogens? If I did go with LEDs, is there a particular colour I should go for (e.g. 'warm white', which is yellowish)?

By the time winter comes around again, my son will be 2. I'd be worried about having heat lamps within reach!

 

[Newbophyte]

LED's with a low lifetime?! No way! Those things are solid state and run at room temperature! Compare that to an incandescent or halogen where you're heating a tiny tungsten wire up to tens of thousands of degrees!

You'll get 50x more lifetime out of the LED, easy. It's more expensive upfront sure, but the spectrum is much better attenuated so you can hit the frequencies you want, and you're not generating a whole bunch of waste heat, which is why a 7 Watt LED light puts out the same amount of lumens as a 60W incandescent bulb. I still don't get how there is such a controversy over this. I'm about to start making my own setups and putting them out as soon as I track down a little more info on the sources of this craze.

 

[tara]

You'll get 50x more lifetime out of the LED, easy. It's more expensive upfront sure, but the spectrum is much better attenuated so you can hit the frequencies you want, and you're not generating a whole bunch of waste heat, which is why a 7 Watt LED light puts out the same amount of lumens as a 60W incandescent bulb. I still don't get how there is such a controversy over this.

If you only want light, heat is waste. But if you want the near-infrared part of the spectrum, which is supplied by incandescents, then I wouldn't necessarily think of it as just waste.

 

[Jellyfish]

Thanks, LucyL, that's very helpful. Have you noticed any issues with halogens? If I did go with LEDs, is there a particular colour I should go for (e.g. 'warm white', which is yellowish)?

By the time winter comes around again, my son will be 2. I'd be worried about having heat lamps within reach!

Warm white is ok.

http://www.newgradoptometry.com/wp-cont ... vencia.png

 

[dd99]

Thanks for that, jellyfish. From that chart, it looks like the halogen spectrum is healthier than the warm white LED spectrum, peaking closer to the reds, around 600nm. I might just stick to the halogens for indoor lightning. We have, like, 50 something in the house - I'd bankrupt myself switching to LED!