Lamina ceramics releases warm-white BL4000

Lamina ceramics has come out with a version of their BL4000 putting out 95 lumens of warm white light at a CCT of 3000K. Read about it here. What is interesting here is that there isn't as much of an output penalty as warm whites from other vendors. Another interesting thing looking at the data sheet for these is that the CRI is 76. This is actually less than the CRI of 78 for the 5500K version. This dispels the myth that warm white LEDs always have better color rendering because their CCT is closer to incandescents. In fact, the poorer color rendering compared to, for example, a warm-white Luxeon probably accounts for the superior output. BTW, I've never been much of a fan of warm-white LEDs but for the reasons given I found this development noteworthy.

I'd personally like to see 5500K LEDs with better color rendering rather than 3000K LEDs with poorer color rendering than existing ones. And yes, just like their warm-white counterparts a high CRI 5500K LED would probably have far less output than a standard version.

But lots of research has shown we have been conditioned over thousands of years to prefer warm light – like that of a setting sun, fireplace or can-dles – for our living environments.

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Interesting marketing babble from Lamina's press release, probably heavily influenced by lighting designers who seem to absolutely love "incandescent-like" lighting as some sort of universal holy grail gold standard. Since man hasn't been using artificial light long enough to have evolved a preference for warm white then any "conditioning" simply occurs from the time an individual is born, not over thousands of years. Also, as we get more used to seeing decent "cool" lighting at work or even in parking lots lit with metal halide lamps we may in the process prefer such lighting in our homes. Fact is sunlight and starlight are the only types of light we are evolved to prefer. Nevertheless, this shows that the LED industry is just as capable of using incomplete, incorrect, or just plain misleading information in advertising as any other industry.