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Comment by jedberg | Hacker News Reader

As all these cities convert to LED, not a single one is remembering one of the big advantages of sodium lights on the environment -- it's better for the animals. A lot of animals navigate by moonlight. When it looks like there is a moon every 50 ft, that really screws them up.

Not to mention how bad it is for humans. I installed a bunch of 1850K lights in my house as well as f.lux on my computer and night watch on my phone. After 11pm, I try to avoid any light above 1850K at all costs.

And it has worked. I sleep a lot better since I went "all 1850". But when I have to drive late at night, it screws that all up.

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Many neighbourhoods did not convert to sodium lights until the 70s and 80s.

For the better part of the 20th century we used mercury-vapor street lights, which bathed the streets in soft blue light. The complete lack of red wavelengths in these lights would make a red car look black, and made humans look like vampires.

The animals and the humans will be just fine.

For the better part of the 20th century we put lead in gasoline. That's not a particularly good argument for doing that again.

Yes, and the animals got all sorts of screwed up during that time. That's why a lot of cities switched to the more yellow sodium in the first place.

Yeah, this is going to really screw up a lot of circadian rhythms, especially with all that blue light coming in through people's windows.

Windows now has a built-in Night Light mode, in the Creator's Update. You don't need to use f.lux anymore, although it does have more features.

I use a Mac, in which Night Shift only works on the newest hardware apparently and besides, F.lux has more features. For example, even during the day I set it to 5800K, just to cut the harshest blues.

> But when I have to drive late at night, it screws that all up.

Which is also good, so you stay awake when driving.

Where did you find that color temperature bulb? Around here, the best I can find is in the 3000-35000K range.

Google "1850k led".

As you can see from such a search, there are a huge variety of said lights. I asked so that I'd get feedback on a known-good source/brand. Do you have any suggestions?

It wasn't easy. I actually ended up getting the GE "C" bulb, which is the one that you can control with bluetooth. At the lowest setting it goes to 1850K. The nice thing is that it can go up to like 6000K too, if you want that.

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