Hi Guys! Today we’re going to talk about amber vs white off-road lights. Color temperature is the way we measure the color of light, and the unit of measure for color temperature is degrees Kelvin. If we look at the Kelvin scale, lower values will fall more into the warmer colors like yellow, and the higher values on the Kelvin scale will go into the whites and then the blues, and then the purples. Amber lights will be in the range of about 2500 to about 4000 Kelvin, while a white light in this range will be from 4,000 to 5,000. and then as we get closer to 6 to 7000 we get into the blues and purples.
Two ways to achieve the amber color of an off-road light
The ideal color temperature or the ideal off-road light really depends on your uses and that’s why we go into that a little here. So there are two different ways to achieve the amber color of an off-road light. The first way is precise that we do this with our Pro-Six lights and our Flex LED lights by adding some sort of amber cover that goes over the white light source. These amber-colored covers are great, but they will take down a bit of the power of the light itself. Again, the advantage of these covers is that you can have a yellow light when you need it, but also white light when you don’t need it.
The second way to achieve the amber color of light is to use the actual light source itself, so a halogen light is closer to light of 3,000 Kelvin than an LED light source. You can choose from a variety of different colors so that you get an amber LED chip.
Pros and Cons
Now that we know the big differences between an amber and a white off-road light, we can begin to answer the question of which is better, and we can look at some of the pros and cons of each of these two different lights. We’ll start with some of the drawbacks of higher color temperature or cooler light. The first major disadvantage of these lamps is that they offer less contrast when compared to a lower color temperature or an amber light. For this very reason, when choosing a white light, it is important to make sure that the output has the minimal blue or purple cast, ideally no blue or purple cast at all.
The second major disadvantage of higher color temperature light is that it has shorter wavelengths, which leads to more refraction. So this basically means that in bad weather conditions like dust fog, snow, etc you will have more glare and more light will be reflected back into your eye by these particles in the air. And here the amber light really shines through the amber light has a longer wavelength, so it can penetrate some of these suspended particles a little better than the white, and that is the great advantage of amber.
On the other hand, the white lights definitely seem to have a lot more usable light and a lot more power, even if the actual power that goes into them is exactly the same, it will appear brighter than the amber light. For your eye, the white light will surely lead the yellow light to Excel when you have bad driving conditions like dust, rain, snow, fog, or the like. What does that tell us? At the end of the day, it tells us that your choice of a yellow or white light really depends on what you need and what conditions you see most often while driving.
With the amber lights with the amber snap cover, this gives you the versatility of having a white light and an amber light when you need it. For those of you who are often in areas that are very dusty in the summer, amber is a really great option. On the other hand, if you are someone who doesn’t experience these driving conditions very often then having a light that is just white light is probably perfect for you.
And with that, that’s all we have in this article. Thank you for visiting our website, we are very pleased. If you have any questions please let us know in the comment section below and I’ll do my best to answer them there.
