Personally, 5000K is too “institutionalized” for me. 4000K is the highest I typically recommend and seems very popular these days for exterior and interior lighting. I design power systems (including lighting), 3500K-4000K is what I typically recommend in buildings. For home interior lighting I like warm 2700K or 3000K. 4000K is probably 80-90% of what I specify these days in buildings as that is what clients seem to like. Doesn’t matter if it’s interior lighting, parking light pole lights or parking decks...4000K seems to be the go to. 3500K is a close second in popularity. The only time I specified 5000K was for operating room lighting.
I had a recent project where the client wanted 5000K lighting and the office workers did not like the lighting. Fortunately, they were advanced tunable fixtures and they adjusted to 4000K.
I’d pay more attention to the lumen package on the fixture. More lumens will give you higher foot candles levels on surfaces. Doesn’t matter if fixture is 3000K or 5000K. If lumens aren’t high enough for the application you wont have enough light. If you want to nerd out, you can find the lighting manufacturer IES file and run photo metrics to see what lighting levels you will get.
I had a recent project where the client wanted 5000K lighting and the office workers did not like the lighting. Fortunately, they were advanced tunable fixtures and they adjusted to 4000K.
I’d pay more attention to the lumen package on the fixture. More lumens will give you higher foot candles levels on surfaces. Doesn’t matter if fixture is 3000K or 5000K. If lumens aren’t high enough for the application you wont have enough light. If you want to nerd out, you can find the lighting manufacturer IES file and run photo metrics to see what lighting levels you will get.
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