The color of light

Reading about this subject this week, we notice again that in my country(Dominican Republic), we have a huge problem with light color. The IESNA Handbook, states that is very difficult to recommend the right color of light for and office application, since people tend to like warmer or cooler lights, depending on their location. We mainly advise our customers to purchase 4100K or “Coolwhite” or in other cases 3500K a warmer light color. From our readings on many articles and from our experience we have seen that 4100K is a more productive and pleasant color all around. The problem is that in my country, people love 6500K or “Daylight”, they pensive it as brighter and is not, we show them manufacturer comparisons and in most cases they are the same as 4100K (in some cases 4100K has more lumens). I recently tried to convince a School to take the technical approach to their color of light decision, but they had already made studies and surveys with students and their personal, and decided that they liked better 5000K color. I told them that this color was rarely used in their circumstances and that the spec and appropriate color for their application was 4100K. We discuss it and the opted to consider it as an option.

People in charge in my country tend to make the decision in terms of their likes or dislikes and not by the technical or approve norm for the application at hand. This puts the engineers in a corner and they tend to do what they are told to avoid the conflict with the owner of the job. This is the right choice if you still want to do business with this customer, but it violates your code as an engineer. The thing is that if every engineer acted according to this code, the owner would have to settle for the write spec and not his own EGO spec. The truth is that if you do not do it, somebody or some “engineer” appears that does what his told to regardless all codes and specs and wins the customer.

We still hope that in our lifetime this changes in our country and we are doing our part in trying to change. In the mean time, try to explain yourself as best as you can on the pro’s and con’s of certain decisions you have to recommend or that your current boss wants you to do. At the end is going to be his call, but you will feel better in the morning.

We will keep you posted on how our bid ends. Thanks for reading.