Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why so many control rooms were seafoam green (2025)

bethmathews.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 218 posts

Re: Why so many control rooms were seafoam green (2025)

#191

Post by adrian_b »

XorNot wrote: post #164
mikestorrent wrote: post #65

Earlier 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.

I hate incandescents and am glad they're gone. People chronically under light their homes at the best of times. My whole house is neutral white LEDs except the bathrooms where we go to cool white to make it easier to clean and be sure it's clean (even if it's not spotless, there's a huge psychological benefit to not feeling like dim light is masking even more grime). Oddly enough I'm otherwise pretty light sensitive…

High-quality white LED lamps are indeed optimal for indoor lighting.

That does not make them the best choice for outdoor night lighting.

The replacement of the outdoor lighting appears to have been motivated in most cases by the desire to divert taxpayer funds towards the private companies selling such lamps, instead of by any technical reasons.

Re: Why so many control rooms were seafoam green (2025)

#192

Post by functional_dev »

adrian_b wrote: post #186
josephg wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Different color temperatures are produced by different mixes of phosphors. We can make LED light appear to be any given colour by mixing multiple LEDs. But mixed colour isn't the same as pure colour, made from a single spectra of light. Nor is it the same as true broad spectrum light - like we get from black-body radiation like the sun, or a tungsten bulb. Its hard to tell the difference just by looking at a light.…

For light with a narrow spectrum, it is possible to make LEDs that emit that light with high-efficiency, for any color inside 2 ranges, one from near infrared to yellow (corresponding to semiconductor phosphides and arsenides) and one from blue to near ultraviolet (corresponding to semiconductor nitrides). Only green LEDs have worse efficiency, because they must be made with semiconductors for which optimum efficienc…

seafoam green choice was also influenced by eye rest studies... since our eyes are most sensitive to middle wavelengths. just keep the room dimmer without losing detail. It reduces fatigue for operators on long shifts.

Re: Why so many control rooms were seafoam green (2025)

#193

Post by bookofjoe »

duskdozer wrote: post #166
albumen wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blackout curtains.

Inadequate.

When I was an medical intern back in the day and worked 24 hour shifts every third day, I bought a roll of thick black vinyl and taped it to the window frame. 0.0 light got through.

Re: Why so many control rooms were seafoam green (2025)

#195

Post by fortran77 »

fortran77 wrote: post #146
next_xibalba wrote: post #48

> There’s a lot of U.S. history that’s awful and indefensible Sure. But this is not one those things.

I'm with you.

> "The Manhattan Project created the nuclear bomb that caused extreme devastation in Japan and ended the war. There’s a lot of U.S. history that’s awful and indefensible."

That's one hell of a non-sequitur. In the immortal words of Inigo Montoya, I do not think that word means what she thinks it means. "The US ended the worst war in human history. Indefensible!"

Re: Why so many control rooms were seafoam green (2025)

#197

Post by cade »

jscheel wrote: post #14

I got through this entire article before I realized it was written by someone I worked with back in my agency days. Beth is an awesome designer with a great eye. Nice to see her on the front page here. Now, to the content: I often wonder how much we have lost with our endless quest for minimalism. We can't even make buttons look like buttons anymore. Affordances have become anemic at times. Designers who think and ca…

Ha. I didn't realize until I checked the comments that I worked with Beth in Nashville too! Not sure what that says about how I consume content these days... but she's delightful.

Two of my favorite classes in college were Color Studies and Typography. As a long time back end engineer, I would encourage anyone unfamiliar to spend at least a little bit of time looking into both. If you're at all intrigued, treat yourself to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elements_of_Typographic_St.... It will forever change how you look at text (hopefully for the better!).

Re: Why so many control rooms were seafoam green (2025)

#199

Post by deruta »

vscode-rest wrote: post #25
dylan604 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Go Away reads to me as a command to the viewer to go away rather than the intended "we want the object to go away from the viewer's thoughts". If they were okay with a phrase like Go Away Green, why not something like Hidden View Green, Irrelevant Green, Don't Look Here Green, etc. Some PR department would have a field day

Prob because Go Away Green sounds way cooler than all of those and it’s not a user facing term anyways.

And alliteration for extra cool.

Re: Why so many control rooms were seafoam green (2025)

#200

Post by yawnr »

XorNot wrote: post #164
mikestorrent wrote: post #65

Earlier 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.

I hate incandescents and am glad they're gone. People chronically under light their homes at the best of times. My whole house is neutral white LEDs except the bathrooms where we go to cool white to make it easier to clean and be sure it's clean (even if it's not spotless, there's a huge psychological benefit to not feeling like dim light is masking even more grime). Oddly enough I'm otherwise pretty light sensitive…

Cool white lights are tacky, offensive to the senses, and disruptive to circadian rhythms at night.
Post reply on HN