Mixed light

Simulator

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Matching mixed light

A camera can only be white-balanced to one colour. When a room is lit by cool daylight from a window and warm lamps inside, one of them will always look wrong, unless you change the colour of the lights themselves with gels.

• Mixed colour temperature

  Daylight sits around 5600 K and tungsten around 3200 K. Balance for one and the other turns strongly blue or orange. Sometimes that contrast is a deliberate look; often it reads as a mistake.

• Mireds

  Micro reciprocal degrees: one million divided by the kelvin value. 5600 K is about 179 mired, 3200 K about 313. Gels shift a light by a set number of mireds, whatever its starting colour.

• CTO

  Colour temperature orange. Full CTO adds about +159 mired, turning 5600 K daylight into roughly tungsten. Large sheets of it go on windows to warm daylight to match interior lamps.

• CTB

  Colour temperature blue. Full CTB shifts about −131 mired, turning tungsten into roughly daylight. It costs more than a stop of light, which is why gelling daylight down is often easier than gelling lamps up.

• Half and quarter gels

  Partial strengths bring two sources closer without matching them exactly, keeping a hint of warm-against-cool contrast that feels natural.

• Green and magenta

  Fluorescent and cheap LED lights also shift along a green–magenta axis, fixed with plus-green or minus-green gels. That axis isn't simulated here.