Since fluorescent lighting is much more efficient it would seem to be good way to save on energy consumption. However, most people don’t want to switch to fluorescents. There are basically two main complaints.
- I hate the color. It’s not so much the color as the lack of color. Incandescent, like sunlight, has a wide “spectral distribution,” which simply means it looks white because it has all the colors of the rainbow mixed together. Because the light in a fluorescent lamp is generated by the phosphor coating on the inside of the lamp (see yesterday’s post), rather than incandescence, the spectral range is reduced. Think of a rainbow with parts missing. Objects and people that you see will looked dingy if the colors on them are not present in the fluorescent lamp’s “rainbow.” Although most people can’t quite put their finger on it, that’s why they think that things just look bad under fluorescent lights.
- I hate the flickering. The “flicker” that some people see is a real problem and can lead to headaches as well as annoyance. It is caused by the ballast. Old ballasts operate at 60 cycles per second, the same as the cycle supplied from the power company. Each end of the lamp is actually firing off 60 times per second, which is slow enough some people can see it, usually in their peripheral vision.
There are good fixes for these complaints, which is tomorrow’s posting topic.
Tags: ballasts, color, complaints, fluorescents, light bulbs
