Cool white LED vs Warm white LED vs Incandescent fairy lights.
Home Depot had this handy display, and I snapped a photo. Even the “warm white” LEDs are way too green. Incandescent bulbs are very orange-y. In casual testing at home, with RGB LEDs next to some real incandescent fairy lights, I found the RGB ratio to match the incandescent color was somewhere between 8:7:1 (using color correction) and 8:5:1 (uncorrected). Gotta squash that green!
Color temperature is very interesting.
The past 135 years of lighting has been “Ok, I have this new really energy efficient form of lighting… how do I make it look incandescent?”
That’s pretty pathetic.
That’s why I’m focused on human centric lighting.
Color temperature is one factor, but the more important one for light that doesn’t suck is CRI.
Plus, anything that’s not an actual radiating-black-body doesn’t really have a proper “temperature”, e.g. fluorescent lights emit a spiky collection of frequencies.
Also it’s funny to me that the colors we call “warmer” come from less hot black body sources, and the colors we call “cooler” come from hotter black body sources.
To really match incandescent, you’ve got to put out a huge amount of broad range infrared.
Only then will it “feel warm” 