Too Orange?

Too Orange? a reader asks…

I use Night Shift on my iPhone so that at night the screen isn’t so blue. Unfortunately, now it’s very orange-looking. Is there a way to adjust the color so it isn’t so bad? I want to stop that blue light at night so it doesn’t keep me awake, but the orange tint is so bad it’s distracting.

Yes there’s an adjustment on the Settings page for Night Shift. Go to Settings, then Display & Brightness. Tap the Night Shift entry to open the control screen. You’ll see a scheduling option, the ability to turn it on manually, and at the bottom a Color Temperature setting. That last is the one that lets you change the tint, as color temperature is a measurement scale for the tint of light.

Hold your finger over the slider dot and move it left or right. The screen will adjust the color temperature and show you the results as long as your finger is on the screen. You’ll want to experiment with this setting to find the right balance of color so your screen isn’t too orange, but does reduce the level of blue light. If the slider is all the way to Less Warm, the screen will be just barely different than without Night Shift. As you move the slider to the right towards More Warm you’ll see more yellow in the screen, and all the way to the right gives you the most orange-ish look.

As you may have seen in light bulbs, the color temperature can vary greatly. Most fluorescent lights have a color temperature of 5000 kelvin, while most incandescent bulbs are 3000 kelvin or less. The sweet spot seems to be 2700 kelvin, which gives a warm yellow light. There are now many LED bulbs that are tuned to that color range, since it’s so much easier on the eyes than the harsh blue-white of fluorescent lighting. Too much yellow can look orange-ish, and is likely at or below 2500 kelvin. This color temperature chart (thanks Wikipedia!) shows how the range of light perceived as color shows for various kelvin measurements.

The science on the effects of blue light at night (keeping you awake) is sketchy at best, there’s no real scientific proof yet. But I think most of us humans do prefer the warmer yellow light (like our sunlight) than the cold blue-white of most computer screens. So Night Shift for iPhones and iPads can provide some welcome relief, if you are at all light sensitive. For computer screens and Android smartphones, there’s an app for that in f.lux (https://justgetflux.com/), which does essentially the same thing as Night Shift.