Fluorescent bulbs...

[K Frame]

Anyone have the Phillips Natural Sunshine flourescent bulbs in their home?

I put in a set yesterday in the kitchen and... they're weird. Maybe I'm use to the soft whites I had in there before, but these claim to cast the most natural "sunshine like" light available, while it looks distinctly BLUE to me.

It's not bad, but I'm just not sure if I'm going to like them for the kitchen or not.

Oh, and just to prove that you can't get away with just a simple bulb replacement, before I could check out the quality of the light I had to replace the entire stinking fixture. After 10 years the ballast decided to go, I guess. One day the bulbs worked just fine, the next morning nothing. And when I put the new bulbs in, close to nothing.

[Telperion]

I guess if you are accustomed to the incandescent color temperature of 2800 K, "simulated" sunlight at 5000 K would look quite blue.

[K Frame]

These are actually 6,500K temperature, so they should be pretty white with no cast to them.

Halogen bulbs look whiter to me than these.

[m1911owner]

To my eyes, about 3.5 kK looks about right for "sunlight," except when there is actual sunlight streaming in the window to compare it to.  5 kK or 6.5 kK is way too blue.

For home lighting, something in the high 2 kK range looks good to me.  IIRC, halogens run around 2.7 kK.  I think that's a pretty nice color, although a tad less yellow might be better--say 3 kK.  I haven't had an opportunity to audition a 3 kK fluorescent, so can't be sure yet, but I suspect that I'd like it nicely for home lighting.

[Chuck Dye]

Photographic "daylight" is around 5800 ºK, so 6500 ºK should look blue.

[Brad Johnson]

The sunlight equivalent bulbs will always look distinctly blueish since we (as in everyeone) has become accustomed to the way flourescents normally look.

I have sunlight equvalent bulbs (5500k) in my kitchen. Took me a couple of days to get used to it but now I like 'em.

Brad

[K Frame]

Yeah, I think I am getting used to them.

But it's pretty freaky when I turn on the fluorescent under the sink, which has a soft white bulb in it. Talk about massive color differences...