this post was submitted on 10 Jun 2024
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I don’t really have an issue with ceiling lights, but I don’t see the point either.
Can be sitting in an office where basically an entire wall is windows, and someone will still put the lights on… why? There’s enough natural light.
It's just taking nice blue-white natural light and pissing harsh yellow light all over it.
It makes me wonder if we have different amounts of blue cones, that they literally can't see all the blue light. Is there one of those colour blind tests that can estimate cone density?
Office lights tend to be a lot more blue than what's used in homes.
That's true. Office fluorescents are often a very clinical and harsh tone.
Maybe it's something to do with the breadth of the spectrum? Are some eyes better at utilizing a wife spectrum even if the intendity is lower, while other eyes care prinarily about the maximum intensity?
Or maybe it's something to do with exposure? Some people can't see the intensity difference between spill light from outside and dedicated room lights because their brain adjusts the effective exposure differently?
Maybe it's overexposure filtering. Some people get headaches from brighter light but don't notice the brightness because of all the extra work their visual cortex is doing to filter out the extra light, while other people genuinely need the extra intensity?
I'd be really surprised if people who have a neurological abnormality also happen to have a difference in eye anatomy, especially when the neurological anomaly is associated with other sensory processing issues. Occam's razor suggests that all the sensory processing issues NNT people have are a result of their brains being different.
Is it possible that the sensory processing differences are caused by the difference in retina cells? That the cerebellum develops differently to deal with different inputs and thus behaves differently elsewhere?
I find it hard to imagine that the difference between needing the room lights because it's too dark and only noticing the shift in colour temperature is just due to visual processing. If the eyes are the same, why can some people see well and others less so?
Apparently all eyes are not created equal in ability to transfer light to the retina. Some has narrower or wider fields of vision as well. So, where your eyes may be well adapted to low light levels, others may not be. In a world with no artificial shadows and the sun high on the sky for most of the year, being able to filter out sun light might have been a pro, while now needing lots of artificial lights to see straight.
I mean as far as I understand it for me, being heavily ADHD, it's a sensory thing, i feel overloaded and overwhelmed when that light is on me, like it blasting me with it's energy. I also cannot be touched when I feel greasy (after eating greasy foods for example)
It's just too much for me to handle
I did not in any way mean to suggest sensitivity is not a factor, only to suggest that light sensitivity may be more of a spectrum and that there are persons living in a darker world than others. So, it may not be a person on the top of the bell curve that need more light, but someone on the other end of the spectrum entirely.
Since the top comment in this thread was about needing more light in an already bright room i meamt to say that there might be reasons why people around us prefer 1 or 100000 lumen...
Itvs interesting that you find yellow light to be harsh. Normally, the yellower tones (2700k-3500k) are called warm and soft white. Daylight is 6500k with a notable blue tone and neutral white is somewhere around 4500K. Is your office also filled with brown/dirty surfaces that seem highlighted by the warm light or grays that clash with it? Florescent lights (and cheap LEDs) are especially harsh in general because they have really bad color rendering, meaning certain tones get muted and distort perception. Letting in daylight may just be helping restore color vibrance. Bluer lights also tend to have more UV output, which makes them more painful at night. Yellower lights lean towards the red end and aren't so jarring for the same brightness. Bluer lights get used in hospital, lab, and other high-detail settings for more clarity, while yellower lights get used in more relaxed environments where visual detail is less important.
I wouldn't guess you have a different cone count, but I would guess there's some underlying perceptions about colors and visuals.
No, most of the places I notice my aversion to yellow light have pretty neutral colours; off-whites, greys, the occasional green. I haven't looked into it, but I would say the yellow lights (at least the ones that bother me) distort the colours more. I have no idea when the Colour Rendering Index of them are, just that they seem much hasher. Maybe yellow lights are more tolerable to most people, so they install more? Yellow lights aren't rated for higher power though. Maybe it's purely the colour temperature, maybe it has to do with sun exposure and cloudy days?
Just the CRI wouldn't explain why some people find the addition of artificial light unnecessary at best while others seem to need it to see. There's probably some amount learned perception going on, but I don't think you can learn to be blind to certain light, can you?
There's certainly a tipping point where light becomes too yellow to accurately represent color. I was recently shopping bathroom vanities and some showed what the greens and blues would look like under different color temps, with 2700K just about ruining the appearance. I also painted a room in light blues and had to change the adjustable lights to 3500K, if I remember correctly.
I'm just intrigued and thinking out loud. I'm having a hard time describing yellower as harsh. I could see the overhead lights doing a better job at flooding an area and minimizing shadows, whereas window light would be diffused but still somewhat of a point-source depending on distance. The "backrooms" image of the empty office space certainly comes to mind where it's all a vague shade of yellow-green.
As far as people who can't seem to see anything under wandering daylight, IME, they tend to be a mix of people who are either older (reduced dark vision, reduced focus) and impatient people (who don't understand your eyes take 5 seconds to adjust pupil size but 20 minutes to refill rhodopsin, your night vision juice). Or just people who demand conformity. Or a 4th group I suppose, who have max-brightness screens that doesn't play with eyes well against dark backgrounds. I do personally prefer natural light and wait for my eyes to prove they can't see enough before using lights, except for when I have physical tasks to do like cook or repair something.
Apologies for seeming like I was telling you you're wrong. I was trying to get your perspective but just rambled in my own opinions. Lights are a notable hobby for me, sort of. Headlights, flashlights, night lights, street lights, light pollution, night sight, neon lights, uv lights... I read up on lights weirdly often.
Oh, no problems! Colour rendering isn't an angle I'd thought of yet, and clashing colours is definitely something I'll think aboit next time.
I do have to wonder if my aversion is learned, as I am very much not a morning person, so waking up by strong sunlight or room light are both negative experiences. I'm also a big fan of rainy days, and I wonder how much the light colours play into that and how.
There are individual differences in color perception.
Office blue light might be because blue light stimulates while red/yellow makes tired. But main reason is probably that neon tubes still are cheaper per square meter. Btw, selling them is now forbidden in europe, they are LED tubes now.
Red/yellow causes tiredness? Interesting. Maybe that's why it makes be cranky. Blue light filters sound like a good idea, but they just piss me off.
Sometimes natural lights comes in at "uncomfortable" angles or simply leaves some corners relatively dark.
So the artificial light acts as a counter light to reduce shadows and create a more even lighting.
Depends on where the light is for me. If it's a chandelier style, I don't like it because it's kind of in my eye line.