Local news ran a story about lights across the city “turning purple.” Can confirm I have noticed many purple lights recently, thought they were new but according to this they are the same lights as before, just recently turning a purple tint.
News source said we aren’t the only city - “it’s actually a nationwide problem.” Can anyone else confirm?
It’s bad here too with the purple. I wonder what kind of terrible leds they use.
Probably the cheapest garbage low CRI stuff I found in the gas station lights, except not puke green.
I’ve definitely seen some, was on the freeway at night on a road trip, not sure where but somewhere in Washington/Oregon. I was pretty confused but aging cheap LEDs does seem like a plausible explanation.
https://budgetlightforum.com/t/-/70141
I find Google search: “search term site:budgetlightforum.com” works better for me than the built in forum search.
well that is what you get when you hire lowest bidder contractors and he installs lights from lowest priced supplier, who get their cheap lights from a manufacturer that bought cheapest parts, and cares little to nothing about quality control
Not sure about the exact mechanism in street lamps, however white LEDs will turn purplish if a portion or all of the phosphor detaches from the rest of the package. We have this happen sometimes when manuf/install techs force the optics packages on domed emitters off axis and the dome rips off along with the phosphor. My suspicion with street lamps would be moisture penetrating into the package and either breaking down the material directly, or splitting it by expanding and contracting with temp swings.
Should I say something about posting on a globally accessible forum with a vastly diverse user community, but with a thread title of “nationwide”…. 
Op - you may not have released it, but there are quite a few countries on this planet we call Earth. 
An no, in this nation there is no such thing as purple street lights. So I’d assume it isn’t a complete nationwide thing…. 
(hoping you have a sense of humour!!!)
It seems to me that presuming that he (no I don't presume it's he) presumed that we would/should presume what nation it was without reading is, well, ironically presumptive, but these things seem to be a popular pastime now. I did wonder why not the whole world, but the answer to that is in the specific claim being questioned.
Ever wondered why best British comedy characters are not talking in their shows, like Benny Hill and Mister Bean, and why the same comedian's show that had him talk failed miserably outside uk? I'm talking about Rowan Atkinson's Blackadder.
hoping you have a sense of humour too
Pardon me for not being a citizen from the nation that apears to be affected the most, but I stumbled upon an article that explains a lot. An explanation that from our (flashaholic) viewpoint even might not be too far from the truth. LINK
LOL, we did not even need to touch one of those lights nor inspect it, to figure the issue, it is not hard to see an elephant in the room.
Thanks for stumbling upon and posting the link to that interesting article.
The various other links embedded in that article were educational and increased my understanding of LEDs, color, and light.
It is a rare pleasure to read such a well thought out knowledgeable article.
“Because the Great Purpling didn’t start — or end — in Vancouver. Reports stretch back to 2020 and across the hemisphere — Wisconsin, North Carolina, Florida, New Mexico, California, even Ireland.”
BUSINESS INSIDER. elaborates.
“The chip is really pretty reliable. It’s the package that has all the problems.” As to the cause of the purpling, he says it’s “phosphor displacement seen years after initial installation.”
“There’s a laminate on the fixture that gives it its white color,” he says. “As that laminate began to degrade, it caused the color tint to change toward purple.”
So apparently the laminate wasn’t thoroughly tested… Question becomes, is the maker liable for warranty work on this? The remedy would have to be sending a new LED package, installing it, then sending the faulty one back to the maker where supposedly it could be refurbished. I wonder if this expense will end up creating a major impact on the ROI, putting the “break even” point of more efficient LED fixtures out a decade or more?
Perhaps there’s a cheaper solution — installation of DC fix filters.
I noticed a few purplish street lights in the greater Seattle (USA) area this past week.
In small numbers, it was actually sort of a welcome change to see the more distinctive purple tint. The overwhelming majority of street lights in my area have an ugly green tint.
I had thought it was intentional like when people use colored bulbs on their exterior lights, other than for seasonal celebration displays that is. With the trend toward using RGB lighting in all sorts of places, I just thought the city was making some sort of accent or statement about that particular area. I just didn’t realize that statement was we’re cheap!
KuoH
Holy crap. I have to be honest. When I saw the title say “municipal lights” I immediately thought, cops. Then I’m like well I’ve had a lot of those behind me in my life but they never seemed purple. Ok Todd, you idiot, red and blue will make purple so maybe the strobing of those lights are getting so fast and close together that other people are seeing purple. Then I realized after another ten minutes you were speaking of street lights. Yeah, we don’t have many of those around here.
This would by principle greatly decrease the lights’ output. White LEDs work by exciting fluorescence in a mix of materials (the phosphor) using a monochromatic, either blue or violet LED since LEDs themselves can’t produce broad spectra of light. When the phosphor is removed or destroyed, as is likely the case here, all that remains is the monochromatic emission. Filters don’t fluoresce, they merely cut out unwanted spectra of light so installing them in lights suffering from this issue would simply cut out the light from affected LED packages altogether, equivalent to the removal or masking of the purple-ified emitters.
A better theoretical fix would be a phosphor retrofit kit that could be placed between the damaged LED packages and their optics. This could enable service without having to reflow new LED packages onto the affected MCPCB though it doesn’t feel like a good systemic fix to a systemic issue. It would also be a short term fix since the packages that got their phosphor removed will fail eventually due to the ingress of oxygen, water and other contaminants towards the bare LED die.
I want every street lamp in the country replaced with E21A R9050 2000K. Let’s get a petition going! (: