Ctom3

I get my information from 25 years of experience in the lighting industry in applications, product design, specification sales and teaching lighting seminars in my local Illumination Engineering Society section.

By the way, I am right. You are confusing light color with color rendering and your use of degrees Kelvin as a definition of light quality is completely incorrect. Degrees Kelvin is merely a measure of the color of light. Heat a black body radiator and as it gets really hot, it begins to visibly glow. The result is that the color you see at any one temperature is expressed in degrees Kelvin. Color Rendering Index is used as a measure of a source's ability to accurately produce these colors. The reason I said that incandescent is a "gold standard" is that it is physically the closest thing there is to a black body radiator since it produces its light in the same manner. It's output is a direct measure on the scale and there is no other source available anywhere that produces its color more accurately on the CRI scale. Fluorescent sources are indirect radiators since they produce ultra violet that in turn stimulates phosphors to produce visible light. The result is that their temperatures are actually expressed in terms of Correlated Color Temperature which is essentially an estimation of the color the human eye sees in terms of a black body radiator. While I would never say that it is impossible, it is highly unlikely that any fluorescent source will ever hit 100. However, there are some very high quality lamps that are hitting around 90, which is very, very good. The reduction of mercury and the refinement of tri-phosphor compounds are primarily responsible for the improvements. If you don't believe me, find a good lighting showroom and ask to see a color box where they can show not only different color temperature lamps, but also compare "better vs. best" lamps having the same color temperature and different CRI's. Look up "color temperature" and "color rendering index" in Wikipedia for some pretty good, short discussions on the topic.

To say that a 5,000 deg. K lamp produces light more accurately than a 2,800K source is a mis-statement since that is like saying that one color is better than another. That depends entirely upon you are using it for. In the cases you state, I completely agree that it is more appropriate to use a 5,000K lamp. However, we were talking about CFL's and incandescents used in residential lighting. People look better and are more comfortable under the much warmer light produced by incandescent. It would be horrible to use a 5,000K lamp in a residential or commercial setting since it would be both visually disturbing and makes people look like cast members in "Night Of The Living Dead".

Most CFL's sold for residential applications are not cool white (which is an obsolete term), but fall in a temperature range of 2,700-3,000K to more closely mimic incandescent lamps.

GE Reveal lamps may possibly be as accurate in producing their color than standard incandescent, but they are not more accurate. What GE has most likely done is shift colors around to produce a source that is more complimentary to skin tones. That's a great and very effective thing to do, but don't mistake it for color accuracy. I cannot speak with any authority on this since I don't keep track of the newest incandescent A lamps or use them in designs, except for very specialized sources use in very specific applications.

Lastly, don't think for a moment that the "full spectrum" fluorescent lamps are accurate color producers. Again, look past their color temperature ratings and ask what their CRI is. While their phosphors have been mixed to punch up portions of the spectrum that fluorescents are normally poor at producing, they usually also produce a green spike, due to the mercury, that throws their CRI off.