Preferred mired (colour temperature)?

You can see the archived poll results on the Wayback Machine:

https://web.archive.org/web/20221220093741/https://budgetlightforum.com/t/-/72945

I fail to understand what those non K numbers mean.

Apparently mired = 1e6 / T

Why use mired for a poll when a lot of those mired choices don’t correspond to the available emitter choices.

What does mired mean?

As far as I know it’s a more specific/dedicated unit for colour temperature. But I just find it confusing.

Emitter CCT ratings are not very accurate; there can be a lot of variation.

Unlike CCT, mireds are visually linear. A 25 mired shift always corresponds to the same amount of colour shift. A 500K difference, however, is larger at low CCTs and smaller at high CCTs.

The formula to go from Kelvin to mired is very simple — mired equals 1 million over temperature in Kelvin.

My preferred mired is between 175 & 225.
Sometimes a 250 mired is acceptable to me.

175 (5700K) - 200 (5000K) - 225 (4400K)

250 (4000K)

Who knows.

But to answer the thread here are my preferences:

Indoor room lighting 3000K
Under cabinet lighting 4000K
Washroom 5000K
Car Headlights 3500K
Flashlight 5000K

Very true, but also very hard to know what value you’re actually dealing with then.

I learned something new today, thank you :slight_smile:

These days I’m mostly preferring 300 mired. Used to be higher though. And who knows how this will be a year from now. It changes the more I play with different CCTs.

I love 4000k. It’s white enough while still being perceptibly warm.