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white vs amber lights

52K views 26 replies 11 participants last post by  4x4junkie 
#1 ·
I've searched and can't find a solid debate about white vs amber lights.

I'm trying to decide what color light bar to order. I've had KC's as my primary offroad ligth for a little over a year now, and as much as they work, they also have serious short comings.

I've never used amber tinted lights, but I used to wear shooting glasses when I road my 4wheeler at night so I have an idea of the benefits, but I'm wondering is whether the amber light bars are as bright as their white variants.

Does any one have pictures or first hand experience of runnning amber lights?
 
#2 ·
Buy an amber lens for you current lights - and see for yourself!

What type of driving are you doing? Desert? Woods? Mall?

I have (2) 20" white LED bars up front, and a 6" rear facing amber dust lamp. The whites appear brighter than the amber - but suck in the heavy dust. The amber seems to pierce the dust better.

If I was to do it again, I'd sack up for an obnoxious row of 5 7" HID's facing forward.

Here are some very shitty pics of when I was doing my own experimenting:



A little shipping snafu resulted in this:
 
#3 ·
I mainly like to use my lights on backroads and trails. So fog is the only concern that amber would help. I very rarely drive in dust. I've read that the amber color reduces eye strain, but I've never had an issue with my lights. That being said I know that KC's are more yellow/natural light colored than LED's.
 
#6 ·
I know that for snow and heavy ass rain I want amber. I guess I'm trying to decide if I want to go all amber, or mix it up. I'm nearly blind in my left eye, but my right eye is 20/20. However I think that driving at night puts an odd strain on my eye/brain, what I mean is that I get the "starbursts" around lights and it only gets worst as I get tired.

That being said, it seems that bright fucking lights really fuck with my head when they reflect of rain, road signs, or just when they're too damn bright and wash out my vision. Because of that, I think amber lights suit me better, but not if they don't have a far enough throw, because then I'm back into eye strain trying to see past my lights.
 
#7 ·
If you go amber your going to need more lumens.
The newest generation Rigid Industries optics in the combo bar will have the spill and distance for a good all around pattern out of one bar. I would stay 20" or more of bar for amber.
They also have amber clip on lens if you want to change up for conditions. The clip on is more yellowish than orange which you might like more. The clip on lens is very solid and also protects the lens from chips and bugs.
 
#9 · (Edited)
Thanks for the link, that's a good comparison.

So you're saying that the clip on cover is more yellow than the actual amber LED? Looking at your pictures it appears that he amber is extremely orange, and that seems like it would be strange.


edit: I've googled amber led images and some of them definitely appear more yellow than others, I know cameras can't show true color when it's that bright.
 
#10 ·
Anyone know why everyone seems to use the 5000K color instead of a 4200-4500K color?

I like my 6" Rigid but on the way home in snow I had to point it towards the ground quite a bit to really cut the glare. I imagine the amber would be the ticket but they don't have a filter for their single row lights.
 
#17 ·
I found this bit of info on expeditionportal

"If you want to look at from a safety standpoint, peripheral vision is almost entirely based on rods which have near-zero response to light of wavelengths longer than about 620 nm. Also, at lower light levels sensitivity of forward vision shifts from the photopic to the mesopic ( i.e. in between phototopic and scotopic ). For all of these reasons then, light heavy in longer wavelengths is less than optimal for night vision. HPS and LPS sodium street lights represent an extreme, but even "white light" in lower CCTs isn't as optimal as higher CCTs.

It also isn't that simple. Higher CCTs taken to an extreme increase glare and don't improve vision ( actually quite the opposite ). The optimal range seems to be ~4500K but 1000K on either side isn't that much worse. So to answer your question, white light of 3500K to 5500K works best for night vision, with ~4500K being optimal for most people. Some might prefer it a little lower, others a little higher. I'm not sure the selective yellow you seem to lean towards would be a good choice from a safety standpoint. You can pretty much kiss your peripheral vision goodeye. Then again, that's usually the case on roads lit with sodium lights anyway, so you're probably not making things any worse with selective yellow, at least on lighted roads. The street lights overpower whatever color the car's headlights are, with the end result being "tunnel vision"."

Interesting that they would say yellow/amber virturally eliminates your peripherial vision. Makes me think a low mounted white light will be effective.


That brings up another point. Does the low mounted light help becasue the light is below the fog, or because of the difference in the light and your line of sight?
 
#19 ·
I found this bit of info on expeditionportal

...I'm not sure the selective yellow you seem to lean towards would be a good choice from a safety standpoint. You can pretty much kiss your peripheral vision goodeye. Then again, that's usually the case on roads lit with sodium lights anyway, so you're probably not making things any worse with selective yellow, at least on lighted roads. The street lights overpower whatever color the car's headlights are, with the end result being "tunnel vision"."
thats a pretty important fact to remember. Yes, a yellow light may hinder peripheral vision on the street. But, I believe this is coming from a OEM perspective, something on a stock vehicle. We are talking more about an off-road/custom light where light bars have been designed and engineered to perform a certain way.
 
#18 ·
High color index blue allows for more lumens than the same style emitter running at a low color index warm tint.
Lumens sell and not a lot of attention is payed to tint quality. A quality manufacturer is going to be using high bin emitters that have good tint and output. The lower bin emitters are used by the lower quality manufacturers to get the lumen rating and still make money.
A good tint is easier on the eyes.

I use white Rigid Industries bars on the front and ambers for the rear only as I feel I can see more with the white light. For KOH this year I am going to try amber covers on all front bars for the dust. Once I get into position to watch the drunk people trash their rigs, I'll pop off the covers to get color rendition.
 
#20 ·
So the light might measure bright, but not look bright or perform well in real life?

I see all the baja/KOH rigs running mostly white lights. Makes think they might be on to something, but I'd still be curious how my eye likes amber vs white.

thats a pretty important fact to remember. Yes, a yellow light may hinder peripheral vision on the street. But, I believe this is coming from a OEM perspective, something on a stock vehicle. We are talking more about an off-road/custom light where light bars have been designed and engineered to perform a certain way.
Not to mention the massive amount of light we throw with aftermarket lights.

I would assume that lighting a yellow path down the road would hurt your peripheral vision, but if you light from tree line to tree line in yellow, there shouldn't be as much of an issue. I'm going to order a white bar and amber covers to see what works best, perhaps a combo of the two. I'll see and report back.
 
#23 ·
Depends on the eyes. Typically yellow isn't the best but when you add in sand or snow it does the best as it doesn't add more glare.

For straight visibility (imho) 4500K is pretty much perfect. No idea why Rigid or Baja Designs don't offer light in this range.
 
#27 · (Edited)
For straight visibility (imho) 4500K is pretty much perfect. No idea why Rigid or Baja Designs don't offer light in this range.
That makes two of us.
For me, 4000°K is actually right about best when it comes to LED lighting. 4200-4500K seems better if it's HID. I suspect this is because of the sharp blue spike in a LED's output. 5000°+K just seems crazy (and is probably why some are complaining they don't "throw" as far as HID or even halogen incandescent lights do).

It's for this reason I've yet to purchase a LED offroad light.

No experience with amber, so I can't comment there. What's been said makes sense though. I'd probably also go with an actual amber LED unit vs a white unit with amber lens if I knew amber was infact what I wanted. High-CCT white LEDs have relatively little amber light content, so you'd effectively be killing most of it's light by using an amber filter.
 
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