So if you are the individual in the chair, what piece of basic infrastructure will you hope your dentist has installed correctly?

The answer is lighting. Our ability to perceive colour accurately is altered by the light under which we view it. Under standard artificial light with its mix of three colours (rather than natural lights seven colours) the human eye will miss gradations of colour.

If a dentist is serious about getting accurate colour reproduction, they will be paying attention to concepts such as kelvins and colour rendering indexes. A standard articial light will give a colour temperature of 2700 kelvins, compared to the 5500 Kelvins of a full-spectrum bulb. And 5500 kelvins are required to perceive colour properly. The colour rendering index of a standard light is 75 CRI but a dentist will need more than 93 to accurately match composite to your natural colour.

So for those looking for the most natural smiles, check with your dentist as to whether they have the right light to make it work.

For those interested in the details of how dentists colour match, a detailed document can be found here. And our partners AD-Lux of Finland have published photos of work they have done in dentists studios here.

Related posts:

1. How accurate is your colour perception
2. The Colour Rendering Index (CRI)
3. Stop Flirting & Commit : Rules of Engagement With Colour

During the day, computer screens look good—they’re designed to look like the sun. But, at 9PM, 10PM, or 3AM, you probably shouldn’t be looking at the sun. This little software tool called “F.lux” is all you need to change it. It makes the color of your computer’s display adapt to the time of day, warm at night and like sunlight during the day.

It’s even possible that you’re staying up too late because of your computer. You could use f.lux because it makes you sleep better, or you could just use it just because it makes your computer look better. f.lux makes your computer screen look like the room you’re in, all the time. When the sun sets, it makes your computer look like your indoor lights. In the morning, it makes things look like sunlight again.

Tell f.lux what kind of lighting you have, and where you live. Then forget about it. F.lux will do the rest, automatically.

You can download this software freely. It is available for Mac, Windows and Linux. Here is the homepage…

Related posts:

1. Who’s talking about full-spectrum lighting – issue 5
2. New Year Amaryllis – Happy And Alive!
3. The Colour Rendering Index (CRI)

What does Wikipedia have to say about the CRI: “The color rendering index (CRI) (sometimes called color rendition index), is a quantitative measure of the ability of a light source to reproduce the colors of various objects faithfully in comparison with an ideal or natural light source. Light sources with a high CRI are desirable in color-critical applications such as photography and cinematography. It is defined by the International Commission on Illumination as follows: ‘Color rendering: Effect of an illuminant on the color appearance of objects by conscious or subconscious comparison with their color appearance under a reference illuminant’.”

As this sounds a wee bit complicated, we’ve prepared an article which (hopefully) explains a bit mor simple what the CRI is and does. First of all, please note that the CRI is different from the light colour or colour temperature of the lamp. Even so-called “daylight” bulbs may have a comparatively low CRI (as per full-spectrum standards anything below 90 is seriously low) and it is the CRI rather than the colour temperature (measured in “K” for “Kelvin” by the way) which makes the real difference when it comes to the light spectrum and ultimately how good you’ll see and be able to do visual tasks under such lighting.

Researchers in Sweden found out that with the CRI being around or above 96 Ra, it is quite possible that we see up to 30% better when compared to lower quality light sources. So what light sources are those which are preferrable for a good CRI which are those who are not:

I light source with a CRI = 100 Ra would be perfect and balanced in terms of colour reproduction, shading, contrast etc. – therefore the lesser the difference from 100 Ra, the better will colours be reproduced under such light. The lower the Ra-value, the worse colours will reproduced and the more difficult it is to see and work under such light.

A last but important word on the note of colour reproduction:

When comparing different light sources, it is only recommendable to compare them in the same colour temperature. It makes therefore not much sense to compare an incandescent 2700K bulb with a 6500K daylight energy saving lamp. For a proper comparison – either the incandescent lamp should be also rated at 6500K colour temperature or the energy saving lamp should be in the 2700K range. Then – and then only – true colour reproduction comparison can take place.

We hope this helps to clear up some confusion around the terms colour reproduction and colour temperature. Thanks for reading

Related posts:

1. Stop Flirting & Commit : Rules of Engagement With Colour
2. How accurate is your colour perception
3. Full-spectrum Light and Colour Perception