What is color temperature?

Color temperature is a characteristic of visible light that has important applications in lighting, photography, videography, publishing, manufacturing, astrophysics, horticulture, and other fields. Color temperatures over 5000 K are called "cool colors" (bluish), while lower color temperatures (2700–3000 K) are called "warm colors" (yellowish). "Warm" in this context is an analogy to radiated heat flux of traditional incandescent lighting rather than temperature. The spectral peak of warm-coloured light is closer to infrared, and most natural warm-coloured light sources emit significant infrared radiation. The fact that "warm" lighting in this sense actually has a "cooler" color temperature often leads to confusion.

Choosing the correct color temperature of led strip lights for your project is very important, and as important as the brightness you choose. The color of light can be quantified by referring to led strip light's color temperature. As for led strip light, most popular white lights fall in a spectrum between 1800K and 6500K. When getting close to 3000K, the light is noticeably warmer. On the other end of the spectrum, the lights have a blue-ish tint and cooler tone when nearing 6500K. Normally we called 2700-3200K as warm white, 4000-4500K as neutral white, 6000-6500K as pure white or cool white, when color temperature is over 8000K, we called it cold white.