LED Lights

[blackprophet]

I haven't seen anything posted on PS so I figured I would start a thread on it.

I have converted all of the lightbulbs in my room to LEDs.

I bought a .65 D VS2 Triple Ex and some pink diamond melee for my FI's (weird to write that) ering.
Since I've been hiding them in my room, I've pulled them out every now and then to admire them. I was worried because in my room they don't really sparkle. When I got the chance to look at them in other lights (outdoor, florescent in the bathroom, etc.) they blind me with all of their sparkle. I'm figuring it is the quality of light the LED lights are giving off.

Does anyone else have LED lights in their house? Do you have this problem?
As LED lights become more popular for home use, will this be a problem for jewellery collectors?

I remember seeing a thread where someone was advised to keep a stash of incandescent light-bulbs in their house to see the colour shift in their gem (think it was a CC Garnet)

Could I have just bought bad stones? I doubt it since the performance is pretty uniform other than in my room.

 

[diamondseeker2006]

I don't have LED but there is a lot of dead lighting out there. I don't think cfl's do a thing for diamonds. We have majorly stocked up on incandescent bulbs so at least some of our lamps can have them. I refuse to totally give up my diamond sparkle!!!

 

[Niel]

yeah unfortunately three are some lights that just your diamond.... if its great everywhere else, dont be too concerned, if you did your research and found a nice stone, just know, its just not a flattering lighting

 

[blackprophet]

yeah unfortunately three are some lights that just your diamond.... if its great everywhere else, dont be too concerned, if you did your research and found a nice stone, just know, its just not a flattering lighting

Yeah I'm not too worried about my stone. Everyone who has seen in has been impressed (including the guy who is setting it).

I more wanted to spark a discussion about home lighting. I love the LED lights, and I work in the energy industry so that's why I am an early adopter. But I wonder as they become more common, will people just hoard old light sources? Does anyone one else have LEDs at home (I highly doubt anyone does)?

Someone mentioned not liking CFLs. Have people seen a reduction in sparkle from those? My CFLs make my stones perform.

And does anyone have a scientific explanation. Is it the colour temperature from LEDs? Is it the spectrum?
Yeah I'm a nerd and proud of it.

 

[LibbyLA]

We have LED lights in our fifth wheel travel trailer and they're not all that bright (run off 12V batteries). I've only worn a 1/3 ct. diamond there and haven't noticed it not sparkling. I've just gotten a somewhat larger diamond that I will look at in the light there the next time we go, which will probably be in 2-3 weeks.

liz

 

[chrono]

I have 2 large adjustable LED lamps (many small LEDs arranged in a circular pattern) in my bedroom and my diamonds are extremely sparkly there. They darken somewhat but the dispersion is blinding. My LEDs are very bright though.

 

[Niel]

oh by the way do you have a picture of that ring, sounds beautiful!

 

[diamondseeker2006]

You do not see the colored flashes in white diamonds with CFL and fluorescent. Incandescent is best for diamonds along with those great overhead halogen (?) lights at the big warehouse stores.

 

[blackprophet]

oh by the way do you have a picture of that ring, sounds beautiful!

Are you asking me?

If so, I was speaking about the loose stones. I'm supposed to hear any day now about the ring being completed...

 

[Christina...]

Are the overhead lights in most parking lots called sodium vapor....or something like that? I love the fire that I get from my ring under these lights. Although other than in the sun, I love my stone the best in most low lighting environments anyway.

 

[Hera]

Interesting topic! I'm an Interior Designer and I was just studying up on jewelry store lighting design recently.

I have an ongoing lighting experiment going on in my house right now and replaced half of the bulbs in my overhead track lighting with LEDS. You have inspired me to take an extra good look at my experiment for the last 10 minutes.

My findings concluded that halogens out perform LED's in overhead spot lighting in diamonds. I have incandescents in a chandelier and those also beat out LED's. I do think that LED's are a better than fluorescent bulbs.

I'm still struggling on my lighting design and are currently using LED's in my floor lamps and halogen overhead. I'm using higher kelvin temperatures on my LED and lower in my overhead in order to hopefully make my space feel both warm and illuminate a little cool light upon my stone for whiteness. Not sure how successful that is but my floor lamps are within 2 feet of our seating area and incandescents are too hot (and energy wasting) and Fluorescents seep a little uv out and skin cancer runs in my husband's family.

It's very interesting the idea of this switch in lighting and I have thought also what this means for colored gems. I'm too busy buying diamonds so I'm not too concerned but it is interesting nonetheless.

 

[Karl_K]

What is interesting is that scientists are trying very hard to make diamonds look not as good under LED light bulbs.
Leds by themselves can make diamonds pop because they are small direct light sources.

This is exactly opposite of what you want in a room light.
You want even lighting with no bright or dark spots, imagine trying to read a book with many bright zones and dark zones all over the page. Big headache time!!!
This is why scientists are working very hard to provide diffused soft lighting with leds.
Panel lighting when it hits mainstream is going to be even worse as it is even flatter than fluorescent and led.

 

[blackprophet]

I don't have LED spot or track lighting in my room, I have LED lightbulbs (similar to a CFL). Most people don't even know they exist, but because I work in energy management, I'm an very early adopter.

I think some of the more powerful LED spot lighting is used in jewellery stores, that makes the sparkle.

But the ones in my room (one over head and one in a table lamp) just don't do it. And I have diamonds not coloured gems. The diffusion part might be the problem.

Parking lot lights are High Pressure Sodium or Metal Halide. These are quickly being replaced with LEDs because the energy savings are enormus (on the order of 80-90%). So sorry to inform you Christina, you may not have that source for long!

My GF has spot LED lighting in her place. One I give her the ring, I should see how it performs under those.

 

[Hera]

What is interesting is that scientists are trying very hard to make diamonds look not as good under LED light bulbs.
Leds by themselves can make diamonds pop because they are small direct light sources.

This is exactly opposite of what you want in a room light.
You want even lighting with no bright or dark spots, imagine trying to read a book with many bright zones and dark zones all over the page. Big headache time!!!
This is why scientists are working very hard to provide diffused soft lighting with leds.
Panel lighting when it hits mainstream is going to be even worse as it is even flatter than fluorescent and led.

Actually, that's not necessarily true. While you want some lighting to overall light a room, small pools of light in a room add texture, warmth,and interest to a room. If you want to read in a room, then you need to have task lighting (The lighting has to be situated to properly illuminate a book page etc) but it doesn't absolutely need to be a flood type lighting.


I have read that jewelry store's are embracing the LED"s. I imagine partly because they are much cheaper to operate than halogen. An interesting tidbit I read was that the overall lighting in a jewelry store is dimmer than the showcases because you want those to be brighter to have people drawn to them. Apparently, humans are drawn to brighter lights in dimmer spaces.

Blackprophet, What I suggest trying is adding more lighting in other ways, like floor lamps, sconces etc. The difference in other rooms may be that there are more sources of lighting from different angles. In a bathroom lighting is magnified and repeated through mirrors and the area is small so it gets reflected upon itself.

 

[Christina...]

I don't have LED spot or track lighting in my room, I have LED lightbulbs (similar to a CFL). Most people don't even know they exist, but because I work in energy management, I'm an very early adopter.

I think some of the more powerful LED spot lighting is used in jewellery stores, that makes the sparkle.

But the ones in my room (one over head and one in a table lamp) just don't do it. And I have diamonds not coloured gems. The diffusion part might be the problem.

Parking lot lights are High Pressure Sodium or Metal Halide. These are quickly being replaced with LEDs because the energy savings are enormus (on the order of 80-90%). So sorry to inform you Christina, you may not have that source for long!

My GF has spot LED lighting in her place. One I give her the ring, I should see how it performs under those.

Whaaaaaaa! But I love it!!! Oh well, they can't take away the sun!

 

[blackprophet]

Whaaaaaaa! But I love it!!! Oh well, they can't take away the sun!

Don't worry it will be a while until they do.

heraanderson, I will try that. Maybe even overhead and table lamp at the same time. I would've never thought of a interior designer's perspective. Glad you weighed in!

 

[Fly Girl]

What is important to my family is color quality. My daughter is an artist, and if she is to paint oils or watercolors at night, she needs lighting that will provide the same colors as during the day. I was once at a hotel that had CFLs, and there was no red in the spectrum at all. Needless to say, not only were my rubies brown, but everyone looked ill with their green complexions.

I currently use daylight spectrum incandescent bulbs. The easiest test is if I can sort navy and black socks at night. I'll switch to LEDs if the color is true and it passes my personal sock sorting test.

 

[blackprophet]

What is important to my family is color quality. My daughter is an artist, and if she is to paint oils or watercolors at night, she needs lighting that will provide the same colors as during the day. I was once at a hotel that had CFLs, and there was no red in the spectrum at all. Needless to say, not only were my rubies brown, but everyone looked ill with their green complexions.

I currently use daylight spectrum incandescent bulbs. The easiest test is if I can sort navy and black socks at night. I'll switch to LEDs if the color is true and it passes my personal sock sorting test.

I'm not sure where you live but here you can't buy incandescent lightbulbs. They have been pretty much totally phased out. I think its only a matter of time before this becomes the reality all over the developed world.

 

[chrono]

I work in a manufacturing environment which is energy friendly and noticed that the CFLs used makes my diamond look on fire, shooting colours left and right. I think it is because they use many CFLs per fixture (up to 12 or more) and they are located very high up in the ceiling (over 20 feet) which has the same effect as spot lighting.

 

[Karl_K]

I work in a manufacturing environment which is energy friendly and noticed that the CFLs used makes my diamond look on fire, shooting colours left and right. I think it is because they use many CFLs per fixture (up to 12 or more) and they are located very high up in the ceiling (over 20 feet) which has the same effect as spot lighting.

Yep.
Same as the tubes in warehouse type stores.
The distance makes them appear to the diamond as spot sources.

 

[Karl_K]

Actually, that's not necessarily true. While you want some lighting to overall light a room, small pools of light in a room add texture, warmth,and interest to a room. If you want to read in a room, then you need to have task lighting (The lighting has to be situated to properly illuminate a book page etc) but it doesn't absolutely need to be a flood type lighting.

Viewing tests have shown that the light early led bulbs produced can cause headaches and make things look dingy. Which is why they use a bunch of them grouped tightly together so they overlap filling in the dark zones and are working hard on diffusing them.

 

[Karl_K]

Here is a pretty typical single emitter(1 led) light pattern.
Almost all the light is in a very small area with a halo.
What they do is use many emitters close together and diffuse them to get the light they want and fill in the halo widening the overall beam.

 

[Hera]

Actually, that's not necessarily true. While you want some lighting to overall light a room, small pools of light in a room add texture, warmth,and interest to a room. If you want to read in a room, then you need to have task lighting (The lighting has to be situated to properly illuminate a book page etc) but it doesn't absolutely need to be a flood type lighting.

Viewing tests have shown that the light early led bulbs produced can cause headaches and make things look dingy. Which is why they use a bunch of them grouped tightly together so they overlap filling in the dark zones and are working hard on diffusing them.

I, myself, didn't mind the way that incandescents when properly situated acted as task lighting but I suppose some people might get headaches from having those little dark zones you speak of. Cfl's and now Led's will be used now primarily in task lighting so it is technically a better source of task lighting despite not being as beautiful as incandescent. It's a moot point anyways. We need better, more energy saving sources.

I don't have much experience with LED bulbs quite yet. I'm currently just trying out Ikea light bulbs because I just happened to be there and they looked like a good price. The bulbs for the track lights use two bulbs and I can't tell how many are in the lightbulb in my floor lamp. The floor lamp bulb diffuses the light quite well so I think it's more on track with you are describing as having more than one inner light. It's very similar to the more diffused light of CFLs, I think.

Very interesting picture!

 

[VRBeauty]

I have halogen floods and spots (low-wattage halogen system) in one room that make my diamonds sparkle like crazy.

In another room I have a sealed halogen bulb that's inside an incandescent-shaped globe. It kills my diamonds.

The elevators where I work have little clusters of LED lights. They love my gemstones and I love riding the elevators!

 

[blackprophet]

I work in a manufacturing environment which is energy friendly and noticed that the CFLs used makes my diamond look on fire, shooting colours left and right. I think it is because they use many CFLs per fixture (up to 12 or more) and they are located very high up in the ceiling (over 20 feet) which has the same effect as spot lighting.

Yep.
Same as the tubes in warehouse type stores.
The distance makes them appear to the diamond as spot sources.

Why do spot sources make a diamond sparkle more?

I understand why a HPS light bulb would (wider spectrum emitted). But dont get the spot/multi sources part.

 

[Karl_K]

Why do spot sources make a diamond sparkle more?

Small bright light sources make a diamond sparkle as the facets(reflectors) catch the light.
As opposed to flat lighting where the lighting is nearly the same across all the facets.
Simplify it down to a mirror. A small bright source creates a bright spot(sparkle) where a large flat light just lights up the whole mirror(brightness).