Tunable Led Lamps helping to repel insects.

A team led by professor Travis Longcore at the University of Southern California put insect traps under a variety of different LED and compact fluorescent lamps, including experimental tunable LEDs from Philips that allowed the team to alter the colour temperature. In the New York Times article that reports the findings, it states that 'the tunable LEDs could be adjusted to attract about twenty percent fewer [bugs] than standard LEDs did.' 
Longcore changed the colour of the tunable LEDs to a warmer colour and left the other LEDs at a cooler, bluer colour. 

The compact fluorescent lamp attracted the most insects because they emit violet and ultraviolet light, they are much farther on the blue spectrum than the blue lights that were discovered to attract insects in a 2005 study in Faisalabad, Pakistan. LEDs attract less insects even when they are a bluer colour because they do not emit any ultraviolet light. 

The findings from this research could help reduce the amount of insect-borne diseases such as malaria if tunable LEDs were installed in higher risk and infected areas. 

It can't be stated that LEDs do not attract insects as they are still naturally drawn to light, however they do attract much fewer bugs. 

In order to attract less insects in your home, particularly in these summer months, it would be wise to buy tunable LED lighting so that you can alter the colour temperature of your lights. 
Please click here to see the Osram Lightify starter pack on our site, a white lamp that allows you to chose between 6500K which is a cooler white colour and 2700K, a more warm light. 

A tunable LED lamp is perfect as you can change the colour of the light in seconds, without having to change a lamp or even turn it off. This will mean you can still have your windows open and lights on when the rumoured heatwave does eventually come! 

To see the full range of the Osram Lightify, including colour changing indoor and outdoor lamps, please click here. 




This article was adapted from the Lux Review article, ' Want to repel insects? Tune your LED lamp' by Mark Halper, 7th July 2015.