FOR THE LOVE OF COLOR

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Perfect Color Rendering - 99 CRI

Waveform Lighting's ABSOLUTE SERIES™ LED lamps have up to 99 CRI (Ra).

This means that our lights are virtually indistinguishable from daylight.

Compare our CRI R values to other light sources by clicking the corresponding buttons below.

Our high CRI recipe

Some of the richest, most vivid colors we see require sufficient red wavelength energy to be revealed.

Red wavelength light is plentiful in natural light, but unfortunately not the most efficient for illumination - and as a result, most LED manufacturers will reduce the amount of red light in favor of green owing to its higher efficacy.

When it comes to color rendering, however, the over-representation of yellow, amber and green wavelengths causes a significant distortion in the way objects appear, and this is reflected in low CRI values for standard LED products.

By incorporating additional high-efficiency red phosphor in our LED manufacturing process, we are able to improve our spectral composition and create white light that more closely resembles natural light. As a result, our CRI numbers approach 100, indicating that it is almost indistinguishable from natural lighting.

How does high CRI relate to color temperature?

Color temperature, commonly abbreviated CCT, can make understanding the concept of high color rendering a bit confusing. After all, color temperature describes the color of white that is emitted from a light source, and has a direct and more immediate influence on the appearance of an object.

The critical difference is that CRI describes the similarity between a light source and a reference source (such as daylight) at the same color temperature. For example, a 5000K LED's color rendering performance would be compared to 5000K daylight, not a 3000K halogen lamp.

Adjust the sliders below for a visual demonstration of CRI vs CCT in action, or read more here.

Compare our spectral power distribution

Achieving high CRI is not as simple as pursuing incremental improvements in the R values that make up the index. The spectral power distribution (SPD) of a light source ultimately determines its color rendering ability, so no color quality analysis is complete without comparing the SPDs.

Unparalleled color consistency

When we talk about light quality, color rendering is just half the story. Even high CRI lights are subject to color variability at the time of manufacture, and different manufacturers will maintain different tolerances on their color temperature claims, typically in some form of CCT range. Unfortunately, this is not a useful measure of color difference perceptibility.

We take it a step further and use standard deviation color matching (SDCM) to control our color variation. Most manufacturers and even ANSI/EnergyStar utilize quadrangle bins that correspond to 5-step and 7-step SDCM ellipses or larger, and this can create significant color variation between lamps.

At Waveform Lighting, we have developed and defined premium chromaticity bins that exactly correspond to 1-step and 3-step SDCM ellipses - a level where even the most perceptive among us cannot tell the difference in color.