Have you ever noticed how certain lights make things look different? Take a hair salon, for example. The stylist dyes your hair and it looks great in the salon, but when you go outside, it’s a completely different color! That isn’t bad styling— but it might be caused by bad lighting. Here’s an in-depth review of the Color Rendering Index and how it might affect your business.

Visible Color and Light Color: The Basics

You may remember this from school-age science classes, but what we perceive as white light is actually all the visible colors of light mixed together. Natural light sources, like the sun, produce all these colors, as shown through any prism, while artificial light sources often emit only a few colors. The color we perceive in objects depends on the colors absorbed and reflected by the object, so objects unable to absorb the usual spectrum of light will appear a different color than usual.

Keeping Track of Color: The Color Rendering Index

The Color Rendering Index is a measurement of light’s effect on colors. It measures how many of the usual colors emitted by white light are emitted by a given light source. Light sources that are very similar to full-spectrum natural light have a high CRI rating, up to 100. Lights that lack certain colors and aren’t full-spectrum have a low CRI rating, somewhere below 70.

How CRI Affects Business

Having high CRI lights in your place of business can be extremely important, especially when perception and image is at stake. Businesses such as hair or nail salons, art galleries, car dealerships, and photography studios must be especially careful to install high CRI lights. If a customer invests in a product, hair color, car, or anything else color-dependent, only to find out that it isn’t what they originally saw… That unhappy customer poses a risk to your reputation and future business. 

Low CRI lights aren’t defective or universally undesirable, but they do have specific uses. You may see low CRI lights in street lamps, light posts, or stadium lights.

Another Note: Color Rendering Index vs Kelvin Scale

Because color and light have a huge impact on our perceptions and opinions, CRI isn’t the only way to rank a light’s quality. While the CRI measures how a light affects an object’s color, the Kelvin scale measures the color of the light itself, providing the correlated color temperature (CCT) of the light source. Oftentimes CCT and CRI get confused with one another, but they’re just different measurements of light quality that are relevant to different situations.

Don’t Stress- Just Check the Package

Now that we’ve learned what CRI and CCT are, let’s imagine you’re picking out a lightbulb. Each package should tell you the CRI and CCT ratings for the bulb, and you may see some common trends. Typically, high CRI lights are also fairly high in CCT. For example, a light bulb that emits light at 2700K (warm light) usually has a lower CRI (less true color) than that of a 4000K light bulb (blueish light) with a higher CRI (truer object color). This is not always the case, but it is common.

If you have doubts about selecting the right bulbs for your business, or any other questions, our lighting experts at Desert Lighting are here to help. Reach out to us and we’ll make sure your business puts its best foot, and best color-quality lighting, forward!

Everyone wants their kids to get better sleep because if your kids are sleeping better, you are too.

But sometimes, we may be doing things like scrolling through our phones or using a sleeping light, that are keeping us from sleeping better and we don’t even realize it. 

Turn Your Sleeping Light Off and Your Reading Light On

Check out these bedtime habits and see if you do any of them yourself. If so, it might be time to change things up a bit to give yourself a better night’s sleep.

No More Screen Time (Blue Light Exposure) Before Bedtime

Did you know? 

Our phone and tablet screens emit a large amount of blue light which makes it more difficult to fall asleep.

According to the National Institute for General Medical Sciences, our bodies have a circadian rhythm, which is our “physical, mental, and behavioral changes that follow a daily cycle. They respond primarily to light and darkness in an organism’s environment.” Light is made of a wide spectrum of different colors, and science has found that each color in the spectrum actually creates a physiological response in our body. Artificial lighting has the same effect, but being exposed to the wrong artificial lighting at the wrong time of day can have a dramatic impact on how we feel and function. 

For example, blue light is most prevalent in the sun’s natural spectrum from morning to mid-day, when our bodies are expected to be most productive. This means that when we stare at the blue light on our phones just before bed,  the light is actually telling our bodies to wake up! The opposite of what we want for a healthy and regular sleep schedule. 

The effects of blue light on sleep are pretty huge. If you or you kids are in the habit of scrolling right before bed, it might be time to change that routine. 

Another study explains that a great way to help yourself get better sleep even when you are exposed to blue light is to “block the (blue) light from technology that suppresses melatonin.” 

Melatonin is a hormone in our bodies that helps regulate sleep and if blue light is keeping our bodies from creating and using it, then we’re going to have a harder time falling asleep. 

So ditch the phone scrolling before and try these ideas instead:

• Plugin your phone across the room so you’re not tempted to continuously scroll at bedtime 
• Set a reminder on your phone when it’s time to go to put down your phone and go to bed
• Try using a blue light filter if you do have to use a screen before bed or blue light blocking glass right before bed
• Change the light bulbs in your bedroom fixtures to be sure they are not emitting high amounts of blue light (look for 2700K or less)

To reduce the amount of blue light you’re exposed to, be sure to upgrade the bulbs in your bedrooms to utilize the best lights for sleeping. 

Use these warmer LED light bulbs instead!

Use Low Level Lighting

Once you have the right bulbs with low blue light, before going to bed, consider dimming the lights in your bedroom. It is best if this is done with an eye level lamp or wall sconce. Using this pattern does more to mimic the natural light changes of the sun. 

Doing this will help communicate to your body that it’s time to get ready for bed and help you wind down for the evening. Using a bright overhead light, signal to our body that its time to be productive. Cutting it off suddenly does little to help our body understand it’s now time to begin making the chemicals required for good sleep. 

If nothing else, try adding a simple dimmer switch to your main light and dim the lamps to about 30% as you wind down at night before bed.

Night Lights Matter

Many children (an adults) go to bed with a sleeping light on, but keeping the lights off at night can actually help you stay asleep better and wake up feeling more refreshed.If a night light is needed, Instead of using a normal light bulb, again try switching to low-level, warm-toned lights (2700K or lower) with a low blue light rating and see what a difference it makes in how well you sleep.

Be More Aware of the Lights in Your Home

You might think a light bulb is a light bulb, but it’s far from the truth. As you know now, the type of bulb makes a big difference in how we feel. Do you know what kind of light bulbs you have in your home?

SeniorLed claims that “Low blue light bulbs are notably better than typical LED bulbs in terms of circadian cycle regulation and human health.”

If your lightbulbs are out of date, they could be affecting your sleep. Things like harsh fluorescent lighting, that flicker a lot, and has high blue light emissions can be unsettling to your eyes making it harder to fall asleep after being exposed to them all day.

Instead of fluorescent lights, try these LED bulbs for home lighting instead. Need somewhere to start? Begin changing out the lighting in your bedrooms for a better night’s sleep.

About Us

For all your home lighting needs, visit Desert Lighting. Our lighting experts can help you optimize any room with the best lighting for a healthier, happier home.