Saturday, November 08, 2014

Yellowish light seems brighter, and bright bluish light is more annoying

The brightness of the 100W cool white LED is confusing. After being for a while in a room illuminated by it, the room seems quite dim. Going away and coming back shows that the room is in fact very bright. A 300W halogen torchiere is probably dimmer than the LED, but the room seems brighter when lit that way, and that feeling of brightness doesn't go away.

The LED array itself seems extremely annoyingly bright. It is so bad that I can't stand it even in the farthest peripheral vision, and I will walk sideways with my back turned to it to avoid seeing it.  The effect reminds me of HID headlights, but it's even worse. It's much worse than the sun or high power halogen lights.

I'm also reminded of how brown sunglasses affect perceived brightness. Their darkened lenses obviously decrease real brightness. However, on a bright sunny day they only seem to reduce the unpleasant aspects of excessive brightness, and they can even increase perceived pleasant brightness.

This gives me some ideas. Does yellowish light trigger pleasant feelings of brightness, and does bluish light trigger unpleasant feelings of excessive brightness? Does yellowish light constrict pupils less than bluish light?

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