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I tried posting news.ycombinator.com/item?id=304968 to HN in the hopes that a comment would suggest a better setup than I've been using for the past few years but, so far, all the suggestions seem worse than what I'm trying (and many of the comments have incorrect info).

Elevator pitch: Bring enough light to simulate daylight into your home and office.
This idea has been shared in Less Wrong circles for a couple years . . . I and at least two other friends are trying to build something similar, and I suspect there’s a bigger-than-it-looks market opportunity here because it’s one of those things that a lot of people would probably want, if they knew it existed and could experience it. And it’s only recently become cheap enough to execute well.
Coelux makes a high-end artificial skylight which certainly looks awesome, but it costs upwards of $30k and also takes a lot of headroom in the ceiling. Can we do better for cheaper?

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Dan Luu

@danluu

Feb 28

The first thing I tried was 8 huge 90 W / 12.6k lumen bulbs on IKEA floor lamps w/giant diffusers. That worked, but I found the lighting unpleasant and disliked using it due to low CRI (80) or non-constant output (I haven't bothered to run the experiment on which is worse).

Dan Luu

@danluu

Feb 28

The alternative options I'm trying are: 1. Constant-output 10W-15W high CRI / TLCI / TM-30 bulbs 2. 100W+ lights designed for film/photography (1) is inefficient and huge; (2) is expensive, though not nearly as expensive as DIY if I value my time. Is there a better option?

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For general high-CRI (etc.) lights, I haven't found anything better than (2). I've found them much more reliable than tinkering with a bunch of smaller bulbs. Some manufacturers like Yujileds sell them for somewhat less-per-lumen than film/photography stores.

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More speculatively, I've found that lights with enough power in the ~480 nm spectrum are disproportionately helpful. There's some reason to think that cyan light is important for circadian rhythms, and most most broad-spectrum LEDs have a dip there relative to natural sunlight.

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would you be so kind as to provide examples of products in the (2) category?

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For general use, I like YujiLEDs packaged options, like store.yujiintl.com/collections/hi. They're much cheaper than lights marketed explicitly for photography, while still having very good rendering qualities.

store.yujiintl.com

CRI-MAX™ CRI 95+ 100W LED Floodlight 5000K

CRI-MAX™ CRI 95+ 100W LED Floodlight 5000K portable LED floodlight is convenient to install when you use it as an outdoor work light, or just as a led outdoor flood light, security lights, and more....

9:37 PM · Mar 1, 2022Twitter Web App

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If money were no object, I'd probably use lights from Waveform Lighting, but I haven't looked much into the really high end of the market. waveformlighting.com/high-cri-led