What is the Correlated Color Temperature (CCT) of Black Dog LED Grow Lights?

Posted on August 12, 2015.

Black Dog lights don't have a color temperature, and to understand why you need to know what "color temperature" means.

The correlated color temperature of a light source is a measurement of the average hue or color of light as it appears to the human eye, in terms of what temperature (in degrees Kelvin) you would need to heat something up to glow approximately the same color. When you get anything warm enough, it will glow. The glow starts out red at lower temperatures, but switches to orange, yellow, white and finally blue-ish as the temperature increases.

The picture of lava above demonstrates color temperature; the freshest, hottest molten rock on the right side of the image glows white, but as the lava cools it becomes orange, then red and finally black.

If a light is mostly green or purple, "color temperature" doesn't apply, as there is no temperature you can warm something up to for it to glow green or purple. You can calculate a number based on the official definition of color temperature measurements, but even the official definition says it doesn't make sense if the color isn't close to one that can be achieved by heating something up.

Color temperature is very useful in fields such as astronomy (you can tell how hot a star is by measuring its color) and whenever you're comparing hues of "white" light (as perceived by human eyes). Much like lumens, correlated color temperature is explicitly defined by parameters of the human eye, so it doesn't apply to plants. When talking about "white" grow lights, the color temperature does indicate whether there is more blue or red in the spectrum, but on its own it is not an indicator of how well a light will do in growing plants indoors.

While full-spectrum, our lights have a lot of red and blue compared to other colors, making them purple in overall hue as perceived by human eyes. No matter how warm you get something, it won't glow purple, so our lights don't really have a color temperature, although they do have the actual colors of light that plants prefer. If you aim a meter at our lights and ask it for the color temperature, the results don't make sense by definition, and can vary wildly.