Color Fidelity through CRI LEDs
LED lighting prices have gradually dropped through the years while the options continue to grow. As an increasing number of consumers use LED bulbs to light up their homes, and quality of manufactured products naturally began to vary.
Quality of light color
Color quality is an important criterion. This is the ability of the bulb to make greens, reds and other colors appear the way they should. Incandescents set the standard for supreme quality, but the CFLs were not. As LEDs are becoming increasingly mainstream, a number of consumers are afraid that a few products in this category will be bad ones.
Good quality LEDs are lights which address these concerns. These offer the usual longevity benefits and the efficiency linked with premium lighting. The bulbs usually promise a color accuracy which were once in demand by art galleries or photographers.
To understand whether an LED bulb generates the correct looking colors, the light should be measured by the score achieved by the color rendering index. The figure is termed as the CRI number. It is a score out of a total of 100. The result is actually the average of multiple scores, each score a different color. High CRI number is equivalent to high-grade point average of the color quality. Most of the LEDs score in the 80s, the premium ones score in the 90s. This makes them easily distinguishable from the rest.
High scores
Measurement of all such functions is made possible by the use of a spectrometer. This device will help a person to take a better look at a given bulb's light output. This is inclusive of calculating the CRI score, from one shade to another.
Better quality CRI LEDs are found to be hovering above or the same as 90. It is seen that even then, different manufacturers claiming high quality products score differently. Some score higher than others. This difference becomes more acute when the there is a complete color breakdown for the CRI LEDs. In premium lights, every color scores above 80. In contrast, cheaper LEDs skid down to 59 in red test. Light quality is also bad in the yellow and blue sections. Color rendering is much better in the pricey LEDs.
To understand the LED light effect, take a photograph of the same product under different lights. Good lights generate vivid and bright colors. Cheaper ones not so much.