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Special Feature By Jeffrey R. Dross N ow more than ever, a basic understanding of color temperature as an indicator of hue is critical to creating beautiful landscape lighting designs. Hue is the complexion, shade or tint of a color. Few colors are true. Red, for example, may be reddishorange or reddish-blue, and white light may have a cool blue or warm-golden cast. Incandescent, Halogen and Xenon lighting are available in only one color without the use of lenses or other tinting devices. Energy-efficient LEDs, which are growing in popularity in landscape use, now are available in many colors that can contribute to strikingly attractive designs. With new lighting technologies available, understanding color temperature to ensure use of compatible shades of color throughout a landscape lighting design is quickly becoming a must. black-and-white movie or photograph. The closer to a maximum 100 CRI, the more vibrant the color appears. To fully realize color, a high CRI should be specified alongside color temperature. When the first LEDs appeared on the market, they emitted a blue-white light with a low CRI that, in landscape design, often caused the surrounding objects to appear cold and grayish in color. Today, LED lighting is much more advanced and is available in colors and color renderings that are much more pleasing to the eye. Have you noticed something? Daylight, which is bluish-white light, a color we call cool, has a higher color temperature (5,500K - 6,000K) than yellow-white light (2,700K), a color we call warm. Once you are aware that the language of color temperature works the opposite of the language of weather temperature, understanding color science becomes much easier. Mastering color temperature and Color Rendering Index To master the use of color, let's start with vocabulary and some benchmarks. The color of light is measured by its color "temperature," stated in Kelvin (K) units. Pure white light has a color temperature of approximately 3,000K. A standard, 60-watt incandescent light bulb has a color temperature of approximately 2,700K, emitting a white light that has a very warm yellow or golden cast. Daylight is actually very blue in color, with a color temperature range of 5,500K to 6,000K. Color Rendering Index (CRI) is the measurement of light's ability to interpret color. A CRI of zero is a gray-scale, much like a In the garden Experiments have shown that bold colors, especially purple but also including deep red and blue-green, look best when lit with pure white light (3,000K), while earth tones look best when lit with warm colors with lower color temperatures (about 2,700K.) Let's start with flower beds. Typically, beds are a combination of bolder-toned flowers and green foliage.We know that reds become more dynamic, purples more vibrant, and greens more stunning when illuminated with 3,000K pure white light. If the beds, however, are filled with yellow and orange flowers, 2,700K light could be considered. 14 Landscape and Irrigation March 2013 www.landscapeirrigation.com