Fillable Printable Color Temperature

Color Temperature

Color Kinetics Incorporated - 1 -

COLOR TEMPERATURE AND SOLID STATE LIGHTING

Color Temperature

Color Temperature is a generally accepted means of describing the color of white light. The term

‘temperature’ refers to a real temperature of a physics concept called a ‘black body’. A black body

absorbs all light and energy that impacts it, but conversely, according to thermodynamics, is also a

perfect emitter. The close equivalent of this can be seen in such materials as iron, which as it is

heated gradually glows hot enough to see in the red, then orange, then yellow up through white

and blue. The temperatures that correspond to those colors are the Color Temperatures.

The temperature scale is a real temperature scale, measured in degrees Kelvin. The Kelvin

temperature scale is the Celsius scale less 273 degrees. Thus, room temperature is about 22C or

300K. The colors then corresponding to particular temperatures are shown in the curve within the

CIE diagram below. The 2000, 3000, 5000 etc are in degrees Kelvin and are shown usually as

2000K, 3000K etc.

Correlated color temperature refers to the closest point on the black body curve to a particular color

as defined by its chromaticity value. This is the x, y value on the CIE Chromaticity chart. The

reference source(s) are color temperatures that fall on the black body curve