I've noticed that many new LED night lights are available in either 3000K or 5000K (soft white or daylight) and was wondering what your thoughts are.

Evidence shows that blue colored lights (i.e. daylight colored LEDs) cause problems with sleep quality.  I couldn't imagine having a daylight colored night light in my bedroom, but that's just me.  I prefer incandescent night light bulbs that are even warmer (2600K give or take) than soft white LEDs.  This is another experiment I'd like to look into, seeing how I sleep when exposed to different colored night lights.

I like a 4 watt incandescent night light for the bedroom.  I have a motion activated GE LED night light for the bathroom that turns on and off automatically and emits about 40 lumens at about 3000K.  Perfect for night time bathroom breaks, but way too bright and white for the bedroom.

Interesting how LED night lights are available in such high color temperatures, which are proven to be counterproductive for sleeping environments.

That's why I only use incandescent ones, all fitted with red C7 Christmas lamps. There are some red LED ones out there but I haven't bothered to get some as they're not sold in stores here.

For sleeping I like no light at all.
Otherwise in bathroom I have permanent ~100lm, in the kitchen (when Im thirsty at night...) about 30lm. Both out of sight from the bedroom, both made by using some capacitor parallel to the main light switch, causing the otherwise 600 and 1000lm LEDs to remain glowing dimply at "off". But needs a LED without the electronic converter ballast, these tend to be flashing instead. Those with resistor or linear CCR or capacitive dropper based ballasts are OK...

i dont think describing the light sources through color temp is doing them justice. I want to describe them by wavelengths

And then there are some more effects here..

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If you want to use night vision (hope to not use too bright light, that will wake you up), night vision works best at a narrow band around 520nm. "True" night vision is black and white, allthough if there is a little above the minimum light level, your color vision will *try* to kick in. If your lighting makes use of this wavelength, you might be able to do with less overall light output to start seeing, so hopefully the light will be less intrusive for sleep

This wavelength is covered well by 4000K CFLs for example (they have a peak at little warmer wavelength at 540nm). However, even the smallest CFLs are way too bright for night vision. The light levels of couple 10's Lux (PL-S 7W in corridor) are sufficient to activate full color (photopic) vision. So while they are probably the best in spectrum, there is too much light - Unless the CFL is used in a more remote location in the house and only reflected light from the walls is reaching to your place, or unless you use a luminaire that really obscures most of the light coming from the lamp



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I thnk that couple of the reasons why we might want a night light in the 1st place are

1. To get safely to the bathroom etc. so to be able to see where we are going at night (esp. for eldery people, or if the way goes through stairs etc)

2. For non specific "fear of darkness" reasons

And in both cases, maybe actually some higher light levels (i guess between 1 to 10 Lux or so ?) might be better than the bare minimum. Something that crossed my mind - I think one thing that can wake you up at night is (among other stuff) conscious brain activity. If the light level is very low, you will be trying harder to see where you are going to, so brain activity. If you fear of darkness, too low light level won't sufficiently disclose what is in the area you can see, so won't shut down the sense of fear (which is also brain activity)



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The effects of Blue light on Melatonin production happen at a fairly narrow band around 450nm. Not as narrow as Blue light hazard but still fairly narrow. The 5000K LED is about the maximum possible o such wavelength (in relative measure to the overall light output) except Blue color LEDs, so is the worst. The 3000K LED does have the exact same Blue wavelength but it is weighted against more Orange light, which makes the 3000K temp

Other light sources have less of this Blue content at any color temperature, and some have none or virtually none of it at all, like color LEDs anywhere between Red/Amber and Green color, dimmed incandescents, SON (can be considered as a night light if we are talking about light spill entering the house from an outdoors luminaire). etc

The 'nightlight' I have in my bedroom isn't a nightlight at all, but rather a string of green LED Christmas lights.

At one time I'd thought about using blue, but there was something about that color I didn't like the though of it on me all night. (this was before I'd ever heard anything about "blue light hazard" )

I uses my orange LED night light, which is still working after 9 years. Also the red LED indicator of my current emergency light also very strong to act as an additional night light.

I have one of these in my bedroom. My grandma has very dim red flower light in her bedroom and brighter orange shell light in living room.

Picture of my orange LED nightlight .

https://www.lighting-gallery.net/gallery/displayimage.php?album=lastup&cat=0&pos=0&pid=164090 Daylight night light is so stupid, a night light must be nightlight

3000k little LED thingie.  Works fine. 

I have a 4 W night light in my bathroom which it's bright enough and I like the color. I turn it on if I use the bathroom at night and sometimes during the day. In the hallway we have an LED night light with a blue color. It's just bright enough to see around.

Recently I got a theater style night light with louvers and I like the light it makes which is the bright white.

I can sleep under any light condition.... I once slept with both a 175 watt mercury and 100 watt sodium lamp running.



However I generally prefer my room dim but not dark simply due to getting around. I have two strands of lights (purple and blue) a couple construction flashers and a lamp with a fake bl cfl and a 4 watt nightlight lamp also inside the same lamp

It may seem like a lot to you guys but it actually isn't really that much in my room because my walls are painted dark blue so I can get away with running more lights. I like having a lot of lights. Makes things seem more homey.

I’ve noticed that most auto on/off night lights do not work well with LED C7 bulbs. Since the bulbs aren’t dimmable they flicker badly unless it’s totally dark in the room. Incandescents are best for auto on/off C7 night lights.

Flicker is even worse than high color temperatures in a sleeping environment. It can cause headaches and visual discomfort. 

I experienced this with Meridian brand night lights and Meridian brand C7 LED bulbs. At least the C7 bulbs work well in standard on/off switches and Christmas lights.

I prefer night lights in amber, which is why I think it's a shame we moved away from neon. I use amber where I can in my home, but also have discovered the snap-on switch plate night lights, and I really like those. The color temperature is on the cooler side, but they have a dimmer/off switch if they are too bright for guests.

I saw some of those on sale somewhere and was going to get a few to try. They look good, didn't know some of them could be dimmed.