Over the past few months, my wife has gotten insanely serious about hair and makeup, to the point of making her own videos on YouTube and the like.
She typically uses the bathroom mirror, and the vanity has four warm white globe CFL bulbs that have been with me since our last house. The thought occurred to me recently that these bulbs probably have TERRIBLE color rendering and she could really benefit from a different option.
So: let the only factors be, best light for her purposes, and ability to purchase at Menards What would be the best option?
I understand incandescents and halogens have the best rendering, but the light is very yellow. I am wondering if a combination of warm white and daylight might be ideal? Or a combination of warm white, daylight, and halogen?
I havent asked her yet if she cares if the bulbs are actually globe shaped.
It all depends on the lighting where she will be "seen". Makeup has to be applied for whatever setting a woman will be in. At the office, on the beach, etc. Different settings will need different makeup. My wife's two cents here. I don't know or care myself.
I would use Cree bulbs in warm white or their neutral white. I like the Cree led bulbs a lot. Don't know if menards has them. I know Home Depot does.
I was just looking for the same thing. My over mirror fixture has 3 lights. 60 Watts. What wattage are yours?? I am gonna follow this thread. They also need to be flood.
Any Nichia’s out there I LOVE the High CRI light. But, I think women would like more flexibility??
On another forum, they told me to try GE Reveal bulbs, which are not energy saving. If they make that much difference I’ll use them, it’s not like bathroom lights are on much.
FWIW I did a little experimenting tonight without buying anything new—
4 warm white CFLs. Tried replacing one with an incandescent. No noticeable difference. Tried replacing one with a daylight CFL. HUGE difference in both the color rendering and the light itself. Bathroom seems WAAAAYYYY brighter.
You want to find a light that has “neutral” tint, somewhere in the 4300-4800K range…this will make all the colors alot more vibrant and “true”
This is why my favorite tint is T6-4C XM-L’s
Cool white makes colors wash out on webcams and whatnot, warm colors make things yellowish and blarg
Still havent gotten around to buying new bulbs . . . I put in 4 daylight spiral bulbs just to see what the wife said. She thinks they’re great. “The other ones were rosy, these are much better!”
A mix like that at work sounds right. I think halogen are pretty close to black body but at a higher temperature than regular type incandescents. (The data Max Plank derived his constant from was motivated by light bulb development.) What do the spectra of fluorescents look like?
FWIW, the most effective lighting I’ve found for makeup is a 50/50 mix of warm white and cool or daylight bulbs. Currently I have eight 2700K warm and 5000K daylight Cree bulbs in a pattern like “WDDW DWWD” above the bathroom mirror, and it shows colors better than any single bulb type I’ve ever seen. In particular, it really helps me see the subtle shades involved in putting on makeup.
The result is a tad bit bright though; it’s on a dimmer so I don’t have to be blinded by 6400 lumens every time I pop in to brush my teeth or use the loo.
The actual bulbs used probably don’t matter all that much, as long as they cover a wide tint range and have at least 80 CRI (all EnergyStar bulbs require this). In the past, I’ve used fluorescents at 2700K and 6500K together, and it worked well too.
For makeup, you don’t necessarily need accurate color rendition (high CRI). It’s more important to exaggerate and saturate colors all across the spectrum, to more easily discern subtle shade differences. If you can make the makeup look good under those harsh conditions, it’ll look fantastic in normal lighting.
It does seem that a spectrum with high and low places could give more saturated colors than one more like natural. So CRI and tint are not all the story.
For me, I prefer doing my makeup in either neutral white (CFL) or actual daylight, depending on where I am going.
CFL daylight bulbs can be really low CRI so do check (I have one that is around 70 CRI which is poor for colour matching, and the newer one is 80 CRI but still seems to wash out compared to sunlight), and this can be a problem if blending eyeshadows and matching blushers with lippy, but okay for last minute touch ups.
I don’t really wear too much that you see the makeup, so it’s easy for me to transition to an evening look in warm white lighting.
Someone made an excellent point that if she’s wearing makeup to work and work is all fluorescent lighting, it might be best to use fluorescent lighting in application.
I was more concerned about the pictures she was taking.
I switched the CFLs to CWWC and there seem to be less shadows that way. Surprisingly, the cool/daylight bulbs are WAY brighter than the warm white!
