Just asked a 10th person of the female persuasion, so far 8 preferred the Cool White

Tested mostly floody lights in bright 'wall of light' scenarios - Nichia 219, XP-G2 6500K and XP-G2 4000K neutral, also an 3800K incandescent like. Even compared to the better color rendering of the Nichia 219 they still liked the cooler 6500K.

I guess to them it makes the pantry items and cars light up more. Or maybe it's something different with their hard wiring. :thinking:

lol, good test.

My wife absolutely LOVES warm white (35-3800k) over anything. She claims it's super relaxing. I kinda agree. I only have 2 cool ones in my entire arsenal.

2 dive lights - cool (very difficult to mod). Off the top of my head that is it.

My guess is that they're all non-flashaholics and, as such, brighter=better. So far, the only non-flashaholics I've met that give a damn about neutral tints and colour rendering, are involved with photography. I would expect anyone working with their eyes to be similar (artists/medical personell/field scientists etc).

Get a bigger sample size and report back! I think that if you asked blokes the numbers would be similar.

Yeah it seems the majority won't necessarily take a "zen" like approach to processing their surroundings unless they are trained to see with that specialty. The cool white was "crystal clearer" (what one actually said) and not muddied by the yellows of the neutral and warms, even if things appear more drab.

I'm in the minority as I prefer cool white.

If you don't mind, are you a flashaholette or flashaholic?

ledmitter_nli said:

Yeah it seems the majority won't necessarily take a "zen" like approach to processing their surroundings unless they are trained to see with that specialty. The cool white was "crystal clearer" (what one actually said) and not muddied by the yellows of the neutral and warms, even if things appear more drab.

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If you're testing indoors, what's the normal lighting set-up? If you're running incan bulbs in the house, I would have thought the ~4500K 219 would be percieved as whiter.

Could just be that people confuse bright, harsh white with clearer. Shine the same lights on food (especially meat) and you might get different answers.

Edit: Also, this thread get's an award for being the 'least scientific test' on CPF:nana:.

Well, I'm female and a flashaholic with a collection of sixty+ lights and the high CRI Nichia 219 is by far my favorite emitter. I believe gravelmonkey is correct, your poll might have more to do with participants being non-flashaholics and less to do with gender. Setting up a tint preference poll question for female CPFers would be interesting.

ledmitter_nli said:

If you don't mind, are you a flashaholette or flashaholic?

Click to expand...

I'm a flashaholic

gravelmonkey said:

If you're testing indoors, what's the normal lighting set-up? If you're running incan bulbs in the house, I would have thought the ~4500K 219 would be percieved as whiter.

Could just be that people confuse bright, harsh white with clearer. Shine the same lights on food (especially meat) and you might get different answers.

Edit: Also, this thread get's an award for being the 'least scientific test' on CPF:nana:.

Click to expand...

It was tested mostly in flood-everything-in front-of-you lighting 1100 to 1700 lumens. Not too much of a hotspot. Our premises are mostly neutral fluorescent and where turned off to let the eyes acclimate, outside, a big orange sodium street light.

For close up and low key lighting the Nichia 219 did win the "finger nails" test each time, although I've only queried 6 which was enough for me

Yeah :nana: I know.

sassaquin said:

Well, I'm female and a flashaholic with a collection of sixty+ lights and the high CRI Nichia 219 is by far my favorite emitter. I believe gravelmonkey is correct, your poll might have more to do with participants being non-flashaholics and less to do with gender. Setting up a tint preference poll question for female CPFers would be interesting.

Click to expand...

Whoah. I guess I have to retract my statement long ago where I bluntly suggested, "Fact! Women flashaholics do not post here!"

You might find different results perhaps, if the duration of the "testing" was longer ....

Cool white (to me, at least) appears "brighter" (given same actual lumen output), but with more glare and more tiring for the eyes over time, than a warmer tint.

Ryp said:

I'm a flashaholic

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Oh. Ok. that's cool bro.

Just for the record:

If you don't mind, are you a flashaholette or flashaholic?
\


I'm a flashaholic
\


....
\

Change the light in the bedroom to a ~6500K CFL, see how quickly she replaces it herself..

Interesting test. I think that most people though, male or female, will pick cool white if they are not accustomed to quality or powerful flashlights. I think that's simply because cool white is more impressive in general. It may not have the color rendition of neutrals or warm lights, but they are usually brighter all other things being equal.
I do have to add that I MUCH prefer CW vs warm or NW. I detest any beam under 4k. Looks sickening to me. Unfortunately my TN31mb is very close to 4k (maybe lower) and thus why I never hardly turn the light on anymore.
And yes I'm a true flashaholic. I waste more money and time in this silly hobby as most I think. And I prefer lights generally around 6k. As long as it's over 5k I'm ok with it.

I can see where they are coming from, what they may be experiencing. We stare and analyze our tints long enough to the point where we've psychosomatically adapted - the exposure effect - we like what we've "warmed up to" for the moment.

The other tests in comparison where short duration impulses (what 5 seconds?) so there's less opportunity for someone to develop a bias for any one tint. Their responses are more candid. If I could go blank and then ask myself which tint looks whiter, then the cool white would admittingly look whiter, brighter and "clearer" to me as well.

I changed out the bulbs in one of the rooms at home to LEDs (more on the cool side) and within 4 hours my wife asked me to change them back. She says she really prefers the "yellow" lights. So off I go and replace her purse light with a nice neutral light...... bad idea. She said she prefers the brighter white light. I guess different temps for different uses.

My wife does not like cool white at all. We had bought some so called "daylight white" compact CFL bulbs a while back. When we installed them the first thing she thought was that they had a strange, unnatural light and made things look ghostly. I would say the lamps where probably 6500K. She also noticed the difference between my cool white and neutral white flashlights and said she did not like the cool white tints and preferred the neutral ones. Guess what I gave her? I let her have my Nailbender one-mode Nichia 219 in a Solarforce host. I mixed and matched the parts of the host because she likes a protruding forward clicky.

Anyway, I am of the belief that if all was equal except for tint that most would choose neutral white or warm white over cool white. I believe that fact that you see far more "soft white" compact CFL bulbs in the stores vs. cool white ones is a pretty good case that the buying market does not prefer cool white. You can speculate all day long about why that is, of course.

For example, if neutral white flashlights had the same or even higher lumen output than the same model in cool white I think that most people would then choose neutral white. How many times have we all seen someone say something like - "I really would like to get the neutral white version but it has 100(e.g.) less lumens than the cool white one so I will buy the cool white because it is brighter". If I had a nickel for every time I saw such a comment.

HSG said:

I changed out the bulbs in one of the rooms at home to LEDs (more on the cool side) and within 4 hours my wife asked me to change them back. She says she really prefers the "yellow" lights. So off I go and replace her purse light with a nice neutral light...... bad idea. She said she prefers the brighter white light. I guess different temps for different uses.

Click to expand...

I'm guessing here, but I think cool white just stands out more compared to all the neutral and orange like ambient lighting that pervades urban areas. So a flashlight with a cool white beam cuts through more starkly than a neutral or warm light, giving the impression of being a veritable opening of fresh air in the orange swamp. For what a flashlight does, being a temporary slice of lighting, cool white might appear to be better.

It's all psychological.