Most people will probably choose something slightly warm to neutral colored, maybe 3,000 to 6,000 K, and from what I could tell, it doesn’t seem like differences in that range are likely to have too large an impact.
Color temperature was historically related to brightness, so I suspect most people will be happiest with bright blue-ish (5000-6000K) light in the middle of the day and less bright reddish (2700-3000K) light later in the day, and then even dimmer and more red-shifted at night if possible (candles are around 2000K).
In practice people seem to like 2700-3000K light at any brightness level but I think 5000K looks really nice when it’s sufficiently bright, and I assume really bright 2000K light would look weird.
Ah, that makes sense and is interesting. Thanks for pointing it out.
A related data point: the expensive and presumably very high quality Brighter Lamp ranges in color temperature from 2220K (“warm sunset”) to 6500K (“pure daylight”). I think that further points towards optimal color temperature falling somewhere in that range for most people.
Color temperature was historically related to brightness, so I suspect most people will be happiest with bright blue-ish (5000-6000K) light in the middle of the day and less bright reddish (2700-3000K) light later in the day, and then even dimmer and more red-shifted at night if possible (candles are around 2000K).
In practice people seem to like 2700-3000K light at any brightness level but I think 5000K looks really nice when it’s sufficiently bright, and I assume really bright 2000K light would look weird.
Ah, that makes sense and is interesting. Thanks for pointing it out.
A related data point: the expensive and presumably very high quality Brighter Lamp ranges in color temperature from 2220K (“warm sunset”) to 6500K (“pure daylight”). I think that further points towards optimal color temperature falling somewhere in that range for most people.