This is the only way. I’ve had a combo of Hue and LIFX lights throughout my house for the last 4 years, it absolutely drives me insane when a room is not properly lit now.

It’s 2023 people, we have the technology to perfect our room’s color temperature!

Yep- this right here is what color temp is all about!

I prefer 5000 k but have good control of them . Also have more fixtures than most do. I only use light where needed and a lot of my 5k bulbs are extremely low wattage (25-40 watt equivalent) To each their own

Quick math says your fine. You should be able to get up to 10 on that circuit.

Pitching in to recommend that any subsequent readers who wear makeup to consider matching their bathroom lights to their place of work lights for colour temperature. That way when you apply your makeup it will closely resemble how it will look at work, or substitute for wherever else you might feel most comfortable projecting your modified appearance.
For those who don't use makeup, then I would suggest a cooler white, it might help you keep track of your skin and observe any changes that might be occurring (such as the size and shape of any moles, which could indicate skin cancer).

Warmer lighting is fine for most tasks, if you're having issues with task visibility you probably just need more lights. Most people I see with this issue are relying on a few ceiling lights to do all of the lighting work - minimal ceiling lighting will generally be there to provide ambient light, and should be supplemented with additional lighting for tasks. Lamps in locations where you're reading or writing, pendants or cans in kitchen areas over countertops etc.

I run into this pretty frequently, a customer will have one boob light on the ceiling cranked to 5000k so they can do tasks in the area, when layered, task specific lighting to supplement would make the space a lot more functional without a glaring, cool ceiling light completely dominating the space.

It's all personal preference of course, but I think most people associate overly cool light with hospitals and offices. Really my biggest pet peeve is people who have an assortment of different colors like they just randomly bought whatever bulb was in front of them (which is frequently the case). I can't stand multiple can lights that all have a different color. You can layer in different color lights if it's done with some intention, but man I usually think it looks horrible.

Well, either this is the first crack in their marriage or they’ll be laughing about it at their 30th wedding anniversary. Hopefully, it’ll be the second one.

My LEDs in my office ( 2x4 ft LED panels ) have a 10 volt dimming circuit. Dimmer has on/off switch and a slide dimmer. Lights have a pair 110v power wires and a pair of 10v dimmer wires. Darn thing was not cheap. Although the lights were quite reasonable.

Hey OP, I'm assuming based on the 600W/150W breakdown, this is a Lutron dimmer, because that's their standard incandescent and LED load limits for most of their LED+ dimmer line. If that's the case, I want to add a tip for you:

Depending on the LED, it's likely the lamps will strobe, shimmer, or simply turn off when you dim down to the low end. This is common with LEDs. If this happens, Lutron has a feature called low-end trim which adjusts how low the lights will dim. This allows you to avoid dimming so low the lights start to have issues. Just look for it on your instruction sheet.

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Agreed! 5k is too cold for us too. I bought a handful of 4500 or 5k bulbs from the local Orange store and put them in the outdoor fixtures of my rural home.

Terrible. Cold, stark white like an operating room in the middle of farm land. Swapped them out for 2700k and lower "wattage" and they're much better. I tried the bulbs in the fixtures in the house but again the only place it was decent is the basement workspaces.

Worth noting that old style dimmers with turn knobs and slider-paddle type are a variable resistor and induce a voltage drop. These are still for sale in stores today and some LED bulbs will work with them, but some will not.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dimmer

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This is exactly what I meant above. Nice to have anecdotal confirmation!

I think it's how you grew up maybe. I grew up closer to the tropics so I prefer bright, intense lights. High K lights like the ones from CFL depress the fuck out of me.

3k is too orange, it is the color of light during sunset

I need 4k to stay awake and keep seasonal affective disorder away. 4k is the color of the sun at noon. 4k is the closest to "neutral white"

edit: oh one more variable. The furniture and wall colors you have will affect how light looks. If your walls are yellow like mine the light will look yellower.

I use color tunable smart bulbs in a few areas of my house that offer a "circadian rhythm" setting that automatically adjusts the color temperature throughout the day. Starts off in the morning around 5000k and gradually adjusts to around 2800k by the evening. I love it this way, I need that white light in the morning to help me feel more energized, especially since our living room doesn't get a lot of natural light.

Only 2700K bulbs in our house. We have a few task lamps with higher K in them for desk work and other focus tasks but everything else is warm white.

I'm cracking up, my younger cousin got married recently and has entered the world of home ownership with her husband. At Christmas she was telling the story of how she asked him to go to Home Depot to get white lights for their tree.

So he went to Home Depot and got white lights, but they were the blue-white ones instead of the traditional warm-white ones. She grew up with a Martha-Stewart-Like mother (My aunt is the living embodiment of pinterest). She told him to take them back and get the proper ones, he could not, for the life of him, figure out how he got the "wrong" white lights.

So she ended up going back to Home Depot to return them, but she kept one package, then got the "right" white lights.

So she takes them home to show him the difference and he says "I actually like the white-light ones better" at which point she tried explaining color mood to him and he started watching football.

Dimmers work by "chopping" out the lower voltage parts of the AC waveform. Every time there's a zero voltage crossing the circuit turns off until the voltage has increased enough again to turn back on at whatever set point the dimmer is set. The average (RMS) voltage is reduced because the circuit is off for some short period, but the peak voltage stays the same.

Dimmable LEDs tend to require fairly large capacitors for smoothing, so that can cause a quite large inrush current when they are switched on

I'm thinking that's the reason for the "divide by 10" idea (that is on the safe side compared to the labeled rating achieved by OPs dimmer)

In the case of a dimmer they are being switched on and off at 60Hz or more, the load on each cycle is very different than the resistive load of incandescent bulbs (unless mitigated by great circuit design)

100% this. People are turning their homes into offices and it’s driving me absolutely mad. Go into a house with white light and I literally can’t relax. Turns everything from a warm inviting home to a cold prison cell. Just my perception- but I recommend you not decide between one or the other and get something high lumen and temperature adjustable, install it, then adjust it to your preference. Some people confuse lumen output with color temperature- and hence cold residential prisons. If you can’t see get something 3000 lumen instead of 600 and I promise you’ll see everything regardless of color temperature.

This makes a lot of sense combined with the previous comment about location. I grew up in cold, high latitude location and I love 3000k lights. 5000-6000k just reminds me of bright sunlight reflecting off the snow and the florescent lights used in schools. 3000k reminds me of sitting by a warm fire. Cozy

Dimmers don't work by limiting the number of watts. They work by reducing the AC voltage going to the lights. That's how you can dim a 100W incandescent and a 10W LED with the same dimmer switch.

That's also why some LEDs are not dimmable. They need the circuitry required to convert lower "dimmed" AC voltage to the right DC voltage so the light dimms as expected.

That’s not how dimming works.