re: #114 lawhawk

Color intensity is a big issue - we’re conditioned to like the warm yellow light from fire/incandescents, so lights that have more blue (white) look harsh. They’ve gotten better with CFLs and they’re doing the same with LEDs.

It’s more than that. Part of the unnatural quality of fluorescent light is the narrow-band nature of the white light. Rather than being a nice wide blackbody band (like, you know, a real blackbody like the sun or a filament), non-thermal lights tend to make up their white from a smaller set of individually-intense frequencies.

Relevant reading.

This is quite apart from the color temperature of the light, which is much more related to personal preference. I, for instance, cannot fucking stand the yellow-shifted ‘soft white’ bulbs, preferring the apparently-harsh bluer sort.