I like the daylight LEDs (5000K) the most, but others can have different opinions, I just like the light that the daylight LED bulbs produce.

For me, it's the same as with other lighting - it depends on where I'm using it, what I'm using it for, and the effect I'm trying to get.

I don't use many LED lights at home but I have 3000K ones in the landscape path lights (12V) and I had daylight LEDs in the garage door opener and refrigerator at my former house but this house has integrated LEDs for those appliances. I have two PAR30 5000K LEDs on a dimmer over the kitchen sink area, and most everything else is legacy lighting technologies (non LED).

Generally I use 4000K to 6500K for supplementing daylight if it's a darker, overcast day, and 3000K and below for sunset and night time. The third layer of lighting is for effects (blue, pink, blacklight, clear mercury, HPS/LPS). I generally don't run the daylight & soft white together. I have only a few oddball lights i.e. SBMV which fall in the special lighting category since they are between 3000K and 4000K.

Do you use incandescent at home instead? Or cfl?

I like the daylight LEDs (5000K) the most, but others can have different opinions, I just like the light that the daylight LED bulbs produce.

generally I prefer super high CRI 2500k-4000K LEDs. I mostly don't care for 5000k plus LEDs. too cold.

but this question is actually alot more nuanced than you might realize. LED's manufactured in the same color temp can vary greatly from manufacturer to manufacturer. Different Ra values, different CRI values, different bins available for the different chips.... some warm white LEDs are complete Low CRI junk while others are almost indistinguishable from an incandescent aside from lack of heat output.

I prefers <2700K indoors and outdoors. My brother and my mother and my father all preferring >5000K.
I also prefers high CRI LED lamps.

3000K for indoor, but 6500K is nice in the bathroom 👍

2,700K in the living room and bedrooms, 3,000K in the office, bathrooms, and kitchen, 4,000K-5,000K in the laundry room and garage, and for outside, it all depends on the design of the wall sconce and the house.

I used to like 6500K at the kitchen, but now preferring warmer color.

For some of the few places where i want to use LEDs at all, it may not matter that much. However here are some use cases that come to mind :



There are filtered LED filament lamps available with temp ~2000K and below. (I am about lamps which put this light color at normal power, not the ones that aim to imitate incandescents when dimming). Those have some potential uses in ambient and home lighting

This color was not commonly available with other lamps before (short of dimming incandescents), and those LEDs put out light which is different enough from dimmed incandescents to be a thing of its own, which may appeal better than the incandescents in some cases



Using as low power LED lamp as possible to light as far as possible, down to 1 lux light levels. (Can be a consideration in 12VDC battery powered lighting)

With non LED light source, there is a point that "cool" light is better suited for night vision (centered around 500nm), so use ~4000 and maybe 6500K light source

With LEDs the same consideration may lead to the opposite choice : Thing is, blue LED does not emit anything in the 500nm. The only source of light in that range is from the left tail of the output of the phosphor, and in LEDs the phosphor is centered in the warm colors. So the lamp with the most phosphor in it (2700K) might be the one that makes the most usable light

I have experimented with this a little (using 12V E27 snow cone lamps, but it was not as much for the sake of experimenting, but because i needed to use 12V lighting and got those lamps). I have not come to any clear conclusion

Preferably no LED. But if I have no choice, warm white.

5000K or (less commonly available) 6500K. Occasionally, the more recently developed 2200K.

I would like to find something to match the 4100K halophosphate fluorescents. Yes, I know quite low CRI, not much saturated red, but not that much blue either, slightly greenish...

At lower lighting levels it evokes in me soothing late summer evening, at least like a single F15T8 in a corner for a whole living room does... :-)
Or the color of 3600K DX MV's.

The real thing, Halophosphate fluorescents

Possibly in 8W size ?

Failing that, maybe a higher CRI tube in an old luminaire which cover was discolored by UV (have no idea what the exact transmission spectrum of that would be, but assuming it it got green-yellow then it would cut down somewhat on the red and blue ends of the spectrum)

For that I still have a few F15T8, but with just cheepeese ballast, where I do not know when that will c**p out in a way it won't be fixable anymore (charred PCB,...)...

Any problem to run them on some replacement ballast ? (18W PL-L ? Magnetic ?)