Best is still bad, white light is awful at night. It should be sodium yellow, or even better, red.
I will agree that 5000K (blue/white) really shouldn’t be used outside of few healthcare/industrial scenarios, but 4000/3500K (white) is a great color temp for outdoor lighting. 3000/2700K (yellow) doesn’t have the same punch and ends up resulting in more light pollution as you have to add more fixtures to achieve desired light levels. As for amber (I assume this is what you mean by red) that’s only really needed in coastal regions for wildlife purposes.
I know where you’re coming from, but it’s really hard to see anything with red lighting, which kind of kills the purpose.
You missed the very best: grass and other plants instead of tarmac and concrete. Reflected light is a huge portion of light pollution.
Dark Sky Compliant Design baby.
Lighting folk DO care about this sort of thing.
Fun fact - more light in an area doesn’t directly correlate to less crime. Good quality lighting that’s uniform and minimizes contrast with the surrounding areas is your best bet.
I’m so thrilled that the building next to mine is being bought. I talked to the new owner and asked about changing out the building lights. Currently they are like a mix of design 1 and 2 (it’s a hanging globe under a fixture, so virtually nothing blocked), but about 60 foot up, in the middle of a residential area that doesn’t do street lights (small town, not a main road).
Basically all the houses around this building have to have light blocking curtains because of the shitty lights. They are -much- brighter (actual bulb power plus light spill, plus they are bright white and not warm) than the street lights a couple roads over.
He’s going to be converting them into design 4, more or less, to limit the light spill to mostly just that property. His son said “fuck yeah we can fix that, it would drive me nuts too!” And I’ll see if I can convince him to change out the bulbs for something less harsh as well.
