# LED Color Question



## HauntCast (Jul 25, 2008)

I am building LED superbright Spots this weekend and I'm trying to decide what colors to use for specific props. What colors would look good on a brown tree, a corpsed Bucky, and my Pumkin Gourdie creature which is green with a pumpkin head?

I only want to use 2 or 3 colors tops.


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## stagehand1975 (Feb 22, 2010)

Greens and blues for the tree. And maybe red to set the bucky apart. And blue and red for the other creature.


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## bradbaum (Jul 26, 2008)

> Greens and blues for the tree. And maybe red to set the bucky apart


Things lit in blue appear far away, and things lit in red appear closer. so if you want the bucky to pop, light it in red and light its background in blue.


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## Devils Chariot (May 23, 2007)

an alternative to the red could be an orange or a warm white led. I like green and blue for background areas.


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## Aquayne (Sep 1, 2008)

The human eye has a hard time focusing on things lit with blue led's. I believe this is why is looks so eerie to us and they appear dimmer. Our eyes see green best of all so the green led will appear the most vivid. I personally do not like red due to its resemblance to fire and heat. I like yellow much better. Mixing the yellow with the green blends better. Red is a contrast color.


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## Jaybo (Mar 2, 2009)

Here is a very good article on light theory. Good info to keep in mind when designing your light setup.


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## Devils Chariot (May 23, 2007)

Here is my favorite how-to. Well written and lots of pictures. Skull and Bone


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## corey872 (Jan 10, 2010)

I generally break it down into two categories...display lighting, where you just want to highlight an area/prop and accent lighting where you want to add highlights. For accent, I generally like to throw in a lot of contrast for Halloween - just for dramatic effect and to make things look scarier. For example, Devils Chariot avatar looks to have a blue light shining up and red shining down. Likewise, I have a skull which replaces the porch light, I fire red and blue strobes from opposite sides at it. It almost looks like it's jumping off the wall. Some of the color combination's I like the best:

Red-Blue
Red-Violet(blacklight)
Red-Green
Orange-Violet(blacklight)

For display lighting, where you want to see the actual color or just give general illumination, I tend to stick with either dim incandescent bulbs or warm white (2300-2700K) LED's which approximate the yellow glow of a candle. Though I suppose there could be some good uses for stark white (5000K) LED's too. But obviously, there is a lot of room for personal opinion and what you like the best.


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## ouizul1 (May 22, 2010)

I like corey's idea about two different colors from two different angles. It's a good way to change the color of the shadows behind the object as well, if one color illuminates the background.

But for something like the tree that is brown. I would think the brown of the tree would suck up a lot of the light. I would have the main illumination a white-ish light. That way you get the natural color of the tree, with whatever color highlights match the scene. 

If it was important enough to paint the tree brown in the first place...why hide/change it with colored light? Not saying it's not okay...but if you're going to use light to color the prop, why not paint it with a color that will help with that? Say some sort of gray or other light-ish color that will play nicely with the colored light, not just eat it and reduce the effect.


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