I recorded some test results today at our home office that I thought was an interesting case study in color temperature consistency, it launches an interesting question when it comes to LED’s.
First the background-In an effort to cut costs our budget people looked at the light bulbs we buy most of for our existing stores and went ahead and researched cheaper replacements. The lamp in question is a 35w halogen MR8.
We set up a 2000 hour test of the these lamps setting a base line at zero hour for illuminance and color temperature. Five different manufacturers were tested, each using 14 lamps. We recorded the data both from lamp to lamp and over time in 500 hour intervals. This interval was the 1000 hour mark. I won’t go into minute details on the test results but suffice to say even with our specified brand (the best performing of the group) there was major inconsistencies from lamp to lamp in both color temperature and measured illumination. Swings of as much as 200 kelvin could be reported in our best lamp and far greater in our worst.
The MR8 has never been a lamp with a good reputation, mostly because of the kind of performance issues we found in this examination. But it begs the question if our existing halogen sources are this inconsistent what is holding us back from more wide-spread use of the LED as a replacement? It’s detractors (I among them) saw color temperature as one of the biggest barriers to adoption, but after this test, I’m beginning to wonder if the right answer is a light source I won’t have to touch for 40,000 hours.
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