Color perception and incandecent light

Color perception is a tricky thing. Our brain does a great job at smoothing and correcting for color shift so that we perceive white light as much as possible. Colors look fairly normal to us under Incandescent light but not so with florescent.

Good article from Russia here regarding the nature of incandescent Vs Florescent lighting.

Florescent light does not have a full spectrum and so color “gaps” are perceptible. That is why people look a bit sickly and pale under flouro light. Photography has always been a problem as there is no way to accurately correct for these color gaps and so pictures look green with an uncorrectable lack of some colors totally.

The cart below shows the color spectrum output from common lighting solutions. Now whilst we should all strive to use less energy we also need to be aware that ordinary full spectrum light is at times preferable.