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How to choose the color temperature of LED headlights?
- pavedge
- November 13, 2020
- 4:26 am
- One Comment
Hello, I’m Su Rui. It is a challenge for me to share the knowledge of LED lights with drivers every time. Spot lamp knowledge is comprehensive, which spans many disciplines. When it comes to diodes, we will talk about materialogy; speaking of brightness, we may have to come into contact with electricity; talking of stability, we turn to the heat dissipation design technology. Today we are talking about the penetrating power of LED lights, which is related to the color temperature. Welcome to the field of optics and thermodynamics!
Light penetration is related to color temperature
Spot lamp has the penetrating power. That is to say, it is able to make the driver see further and more clearly in the rain and fog to avoid danger because of poor sight, at the same time, it can also let people in an oncoming car or pedestrians on the street catch early sight of a car coming, in order to prevent accidents. And what kind of light is strong in penetration? This depends on its color temperature.
Color temperature, color, and wavelength
Color temperature is a measure of temperature. This concept assumes that a black object will give off different colors of light when heated to different temperatures and the object itself will also appear in different colors. At this time, the temperature corresponding to the corresponding color is the color temperature.
It doesn’t have to be understood too much. We just need to imagine a smelting scene. An iron ore has different colors at different temperatures after heating. It is red at a lower temperature, turns to yellow at a rising temperature, and becomes white at a higher temperature. Different temperatures correspond to different colors.
Here is the color temperature table.
If changing to a variety of real environment, that is:
OK, the picture above shows that the color temperature from low to high corresponds to the color from red to yellow to white to blue to purple, and what does it do with the ability of the spot lamp to break the fog? This brings us to another term, “wavelength”. Middle school physics tells us that light is an electromagnetic wave; when it is transmitted, the longer the wavelength, the stronger the ability to bypass obstacles. In any country, red refers in particular to the color of the light that signals danger and warning, because it is the color of the longest light wavelength. From the above table, it can be observed that the top red color has the lowest temperature but the longest wavelengththe, therefore it can be concluded that the color temperature and the wavelength are inversely proportional, that is, the higher the color temperature, the shorter the wave length. Hence, for the color range from red to yellow to white to blue to purple, although our visual sense of color appears brighter with higher temperature, the penetration is decreasing.
Color temperature difference among halogen lamp, xenon lamp and LED lamp
Halogen lamp commonly has only one kind of color temperature, which is related to its luminous principle (it gives out light by burning tungsten wire). Its color temperature is usually 3000K or so, and the color is yellow in poor brightness, leading to certain hidden danger to traffic safety. But there are quite a few halogen bulbs advertised with a color temperature of 4500K, 5000K in the market. How do they make it? Actually, in order to change the color temperature, halogen lamp manufacturers adopt a very old method, plating a layer of blue film on the bulb glass, which is equivalent to putting sunglasses on the light bulb. Wearing “sunglasses” helps to raise its color temperature to 4300K or so and give off white light. However, quite a little light is blocked by sunglasses, so that it will look white but not bright, and the passing rate of some areas at the time of annual review is not high!
The color temperature of xenon lamp is generally 4,300K–12,000K, with very great brightness. This is because its luminous principle (arc light, like lightning) determines its color temperature that can not go down very low. At large, xenon lamp needs to be installed with lens, otherwise it is easy to “dazzle eyes”.
As for LED lamp, different kinds of lamp beads (chips) can be randomly chosen from 3,000K to 7,000K to change the color temperature, so it has the largest range of color temperature. In this way, you can choose not only LED golden fog lamp at 3,000K, but also LED headlamp with blue and white light at 6,500K. It converts electric energy directly into light energy through chips, skipping the step of converting into heat energy, thus LED is also called cold light illuminator that has the benefits of low heat, high brightness, stability, energy efficiency and long life. Therefore, the next time someone says LED light falis to go through rain and fog, you have to say NO loudly, because it’s not LED’s fault, it’s his fault to choose the lamp bead at high color temperature!
Light balance, compromise for good light
Before reading this article, I believe, a number of drivers have changed the lamp or at least have seen other people change the lamp. After the change of the lamp, we often see the dazzling blue and white light, which helps to stand quite out in the crowd, compared with the original lamp. But in fact, this kind of lamp mostly has a color temperature of more than 6,500K, with potential safety hazard.
Generally speaking, the white light closing to the sunlight has a color temperature of 5,600K or so. Some lamps exceeding 6,500K give off very strong lights but have relatively poor practicability and weak penetration. They are only suitable for arid areas with little rain and fog. In Europe, for example, all spot lamps have been forced to have a color temperature of no more than 5,000K, due to the poor safety of lamps with too high color temperatures.
In short, an increase of color temperature will decline the penetrating power. You can’t have your cake and eat it. Then, what would it be like for the spot lamp to give off lights at different color temperatures.
PAVEDGE Flying Eagle Series is also the result of this compromise. After repeated proof, PAVEDGE believes that the LED lamp at the color temperature within 5,700K can not only have good brightness and identification with clear lighting effect, but also retain sufficient fog breaking ability. Meanwhile, the power supply lighting scheme based on the color temperature maximize product stability.
This is the installation effect of Flying Eagle Series, in white with a touch of yellow that is not the yellow like a yellow light.
Above, I believe most of you have some understanding of the color temperature of LED lights, and I also hope you can buy your favorite spot lamp that is suitable for your own geographical environment.
TIPS: 6,500K LED lamp is currently the market mainstream in China due to the fact that Chinese people prefer bright lamps, especially the blue and white light that looks really “cool”. Actually, xenon lamp has also gone through this process in history. At the beginning, everyone likes blue and white light. Later, at the mature period, with the slow increase of practicability and decrease of color temperature, 4,300K–5,700K is the mainstream of xenon lamp. LED lamp is a new thing in China at present. It is expected that as time goes on, it will gradually return to practicability and the decrease of color temperature is a general trend in the future. PAVEDGE is the pioneer in China to launch the product at a color temperature of 5,700K on the basis of 6,500 K, and PAVEDGE hopes to provide consumers with more choices!
1 thought on “How to choose the color temperature of LED headlights?”
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