Growing up in Los Alamos, it's not just the lab that adhered to this color standard. Everything that had any vague connection to government, be it the post office, hospital, county council building, public access TV station, and schools were all colored in these various colors. And many things that weren't connected directly still used them, likely because they bought paint as surplus. One of a few elevators in town, part of a small shopping center, was sea foam, as were the lamp posts along downtown streets, and finally, the doors in the Posse Shack were also green, but that's likely because they were directly taken from the lab
Why so many control rooms were seafoam green (2025)
121–130 of 218 posts
Re: Why so many control rooms were seafoam green (2025)
#122That’s a fascinating story! I’d never even heard of this guy.
Gal.
> Gal.
Heh. That explains it. I was wondering what problem people had with the comment.
I was talking about Faber Birren. The article is basically about him. Definitely a guy.
It’s always a pleasure to be “corrected,” hereabouts…
Re: Why so many control rooms were seafoam green (2025)
#123Earlier quoted context omitted.
> that's why they were the color they were That doesn't seem right to me. Sodium (and mercury) vapor lamps are the color they are due to physics, and were chosen because they're very efficient (and long lasting). Low-pressure sodium is the best and worst of these; essentially monochromatic but fantastic efficiency. Their only advantage, color-wise, is that the light can be filtered out easily (they used to be widely…
The monochromatic light emitted from sodium lamps is also close to the peak sensitivity of the human eye. Colours are not distinguishable, but contrast is much enhanced compared to “cooler” light sources. *edit: but it’s the overwhelmingly larger lifespan (20-30k hrs) that led to the wide adoption as streetlights. And I guess, the same is true for the change to led today, because of less power consumption.
Sodium lamps were deemed dangerous for driving” because they made it difficult for drivers to distinguish shapes, since they were different from day shapes. A kid in bright 1980ies colors (Little Red Hood) would look black under those lights.
LED was presented as a sharp improvement because of the large spectrum of white light.
Re: Why so many control rooms were seafoam green (2025)
#124Growing up in Los Alamos, it's not just the lab that adhered to this color standard. Everything that had any vague connection to government, be it the post office, hospital, county council building, public access TV station, and schools were all colored in these various colors. And many things that weren't connected directly still used them, likely because they bought paint as surplus. One of a few elevators in town,…
Not even just Los Alamos. It was a very common color for schools and hospitals
Re: Why so many control rooms were seafoam green (2025)
#125Growing up in Los Alamos, it's not just the lab that adhered to this color standard. Everything that had any vague connection to government, be it the post office, hospital, county council building, public access TV station, and schools were all colored in these various colors. And many things that weren't connected directly still used them, likely because they bought paint as surplus. One of a few elevators in town,…
Not even just Los Alamos. It was a very common color for schools and hospitals
When we moved away, the new schools and such didn't have that color. Either the grey fad was just taking root at that time, or it hadn't penetrated the tri cities (home to the Hanford project) quite as well as it did Los Alamos
Re: Why so many control rooms were seafoam green (2025)
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
My father was a mechanic and crew chief working on F-14's during his time in the air force. His two takeaways from his service were: 1. No one should ever join the military for any reason ever forever, and 2. Somebody needs to color code literally anything. He talked about how the wiring schematics were a maze, made worse by using only non-labeled gray and black wires with connections and mounts that were the same co…
I worked on military avionics in a previous life and all of the planes I worked on had miles of white wires. The reasons given to us were: 1. Cost savings when buying. 2. There are hundreds to thousands of wires in an aircraft, but there are NOT hundreds to thousands of different colors of wires (even if we allow for stripes, etc) that are readily distinguishable to an overworked airman hunched over in a dim, cramped…
I'd also mention that black lasermarked white wire has marvelous contrast, even in the dim, covered in dust. Black lasermarked (or god help you, heatstamped) wire on damn near any other colour, like one finds in automotive, is distinctly worse.
Yellow would be manageable, but the wrong shade of red, purple, green, or blue (wihch, when seperating systems by colour, would inevitably get used) would be shitty to work on
Re: Why so many control rooms were seafoam green (2025)
#127It's so nice to see colors in any kind of government, industrial, or commercial building. The "everything must be gray/beige" fad has dominated institutional interior design for at least 30 years. Maybe it's just nostalgia, I remember the wall colors in banks, schools, doctor's offices, mcdonalds, and so on in the 1970s and they seemed so wonderful. All these things got a coat of white paint sometime in the 2000s and…
Because it's the least offensive. No one can yell at you or claim the color is "dated" if you stick to white/gray/black and a touch of stainless steel.
Sad to see how many houses are painted gray or beige in SF now. We are going to paint ours purple in protest.
Re: Why so many control rooms were seafoam green (2025)
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
IDK if you've noticed but we are all lighting our house with bulbs that use 1/10th the amount of electricity as incandescents did. I like the color spectrum of a real lightbulb better, too, but not enough to pay 10x in power. I make up for it by using all kinds of random bulbs all over the place so that the aggregate light in the room fills more of the spectrum than if I coordinated them all to be the same.
Did you try using high CRI LEDs with color remperature of 2700K–3000K? When I switched from halogen to LED I did just that and the difference is not noticeable, you'll have the same yellowish tint and very natural looking colours. Even with expensive bulbs, extra longevity covers for higher cost.
2700 is really cool. To the GP, if you're looking for something more like daylight but not noticeably yellow, try 3600k or thereabouts.
The actual temperature of the sun is over 5000k (yes, the k in lightbulb temperature corresponds to the Kelvin scale of temperature) but after being scattered by our atmosphere it appears cooler. And where did all that extra light go? It was scattered around, making the sky blue!
Re: Why so many control rooms were seafoam green (2025)
#129Earlier quoted context omitted.
Did you try using high CRI LEDs with color remperature of 2700K–3000K? When I switched from halogen to LED I did just that and the difference is not noticeable, you'll have the same yellowish tint and very natural looking colours. Even with expensive bulbs, extra longevity covers for higher cost.
2700 is really cool. To the GP, if you're looking for something more like daylight but not noticeably yellow, try 3600k or thereabouts. The actual temperature of the sun is over 5000k (yes, the k in lightbulb temperature corresponds to the Kelvin scale of temperature) but after being scattered by our atmosphere it appears cooler. And where did all that extra light go? It was scattered around, making the sky blue!
3700-4500 is my range I like these days
Re: Why so many control rooms were seafoam green (2025)
#130> There’s a lot of U.S. history that’s awful and indefensible Sure. But this is not one those things.
Did you read the next sentence?
Yes, of course. Let me clarify:
The implication of the quoted sentence is that the U.S. dropping atomic bombs on Japan was awful and indefensible. The author then transitions to “but I want to talk about part of the Manhattan project that isn’t really related to the bombings.” What other explanation would there be for inserting this comment about U.S. history?
My comment was addressing the defensibility of the bombings. They may have been awful, but they were fully defensible. Japan was the aggressor, and all indications were that both the U.S. and Japan were going to see millions of casualties as part of an invasion of the home islands.