Practical advice on commercial lighting from LED retrofits to lighting design.

If you're responsible for determining the right ambiance and light quality of your application, then you probably already know how important understanding Color Rendering Index (CRI) and Correlated Color Temperature (CCT) is.

Here's the problem: CRI and CCT are anything but easy to understand.

Color Rendering Index is calculated based on how well a light source renders eight specific pastel colors. The theory is if it light renders these colors well, it should render all colors well. CRI is a simple and helpful lighting spec to predict how good the visual output of a lighting product will be.

Correlated Color Temperature (CCT or just color temperature) gauges how yellow or blue light appears. It’s measured in Kelvin and usually falls in a range between 2200 and 6500 Kelvin degrees. Warm light sources have low color temperatures (2200-3000K), featuring red, orange, and yellow colors. Cool light sources have high color temperatures (>4000K) and feature blue light.

Our lighting designers are frequently asked about color temperature and CRI. How important are these measurements to your lighting product decisions? 

With the emergence of LED lighting, the options have become almost limitless, so selecting the perfect color for your application can turn into an overwhelming endeavor.

We are wrapping up our series on selecting color temperature and color rendering index for your lighting. In this article, I’d like to give a little insight into how we think as lighting designers and what that means for you.

There’s no doubt that advancements in LED lighting over the past few years are staggering, as is the number of product options that have made their way to market. In fact, the very thing that makes LEDs so exciting to a lighting designer are also what makes things so difficult for us each time we specify a new product –– so many options.

This is the second post in our series on choosing the right color characteristics for your lighting project. Last time we addressed color temperature, but maybe the most critical issue — which has surfaced with the popularity of LED lighting — is color consistency. How do you know that the color of your lighting will be consistent from one product to another? Let’s dive in.

I get asked all the time what the right color temperature and color rendering index (CRI) should be for various applications. Although there are rules of thumb that typically provide a positive outcome, color can be so subjective. With LED, your options have become almost limitless. So selecting the right color for your application can be pretty overwhelming.