Fair, but incandescent has truly rubbish efficiency, and electricity is no longer cheap. Gas-discharge metal halide lamps will give you a better spectrum even than incandescent, and at an efficiency that equals or beats a lot of commercial LEDs. They're more expensive than either, of course, and they don't come small unless they add xenon and then the price goes higher still. I use them where possible.

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₿eth's avatar
₿eth 1 year ago
I think we often associate incandescent with low light temperature, which seems to be better overall for things like circadian rhythm etc. While cost wise, incandescent isn’t as efficient, I would love to see more of that color spectrum back, over the bright white of most LED’s that people are switching to, in their homes especially.
UV-C won't pass the glass envelope in any meaningful quantity. Not unless the glass has been engineered for it (sterilising mercury lamps). UV-A does, but that's not a bad thing. IR is present in a very broad spectrum. Glass, even cheap sodaglass, has good near-IR transparency.
You dont get uvc from incandescent. To get uvc from a fluorescent (mercury plasma) bulb, you need it to be void of phoaphor and made with a quartz tube. Otherwise, UVC is only present when you are in proximity to welding. Uva and uvb are what you get sunburn from, and what gives you that unpleasent tingling when you're in direct sunlight at high-noon. Its best to avoid direct sunlight mid-day and stay in shade amidst greenery, because Rayleigh blue-scattering is minimized at that time of day.
Big fan of incandescent lighting. I still have a bunch of bulbs stashed (most are outlawed now here in the US). It's just about the feel and comfort. Consumer LED and florescent bulbs give me headaches and makes me dizzy, for a lack of a better word. It's that I can see the 30/60 cycle flicker. Especially when things are moving in a room with flickering lights. I use 12v DC lamps and led strips in my office and bedroom so I don't see the flicker, I power off an ATX psu lol. My ceiling lamp has "specialty" halogen floods in it (probably can't get them anymore) and my reading lamp is incandescent.