Los Banos Rotary Club History
Choose Your Lights With Care, Says Lighting Engineer

If the new rug you had delivered seems a different color on the floor of your home; if the golden ripe cantaloupe you saw resplendent in the grocery store display seems below par; if your appetite seems to vanish when you sit down at the table . . . just blame it all on your electric lights.

So says Larry Barr, lighting engineer for P. G. & E., who in a talk before the Rotary Club Tuesday noon explained that you should choose your lighting fixtures and your light globes with an eye to the job they have to do.

Barr explained there are six major types of white light globes, none of which reflect color in exactly the same tones, some outstandingly different than the others. There is the regular incandescent globe, which he says continues to be the standard in most American homes and offices. And there are five distinct types of fluorescent, all giving a different tone of white light and their own peculiar shading of colors. They include the daylight tube, the deluxe cool white and standard cool white tubes, the deluxe and standard warm white tubes.

Lighting, Barr explained, has become an exacting science in which color shading plays a prominent part. For instance, certain colors such as pastel peach and blues, have appetite appeal; others, such as greens and violet, repel. Colors can be gay warm, or cool, or cold and dreary. For instance, he said, hospital rooms painted in light green are stimulating and cheerful, and directly effect the patient's disposition and mental attitude.

The speaker also showed a color movie prepared by the DuPont people, which emphasized the importance of color and coordination with good lighting in the business world.

Of the six, he said that incandescent, though less efficient than fluorescent lighting, is the most popular and generally gives satisfactory lighting, especially in combination with other types of lights. Daylight, has lost much of its former popularity in favor of the newer types. Of the latter he said the deluxe cool white is probably the best all-over choice, especially in retail stores, where it most closely portrays the true colors of the merchandise.

August 21, 1953

---