I'm not seeing a big push to add IC to my setup. Your thoughts? Like I said before, my experiment suggests that a negative light-dark temperature differential negates phytochrome mediated far red responses. With a positive temperature differential, you would likely see longer stems, maybe bigger plants, with incandescent supplementation. However, I am most interested in increasing photosynthesis via the Emerson Enhancement Effect. Since this has nothing to do with temperature differential, I conclude that there was negligible effect under this combination of wavelengths. In my next experiment, I am going to look for Emerson like enhancement between near violet and far red wavelengths.

When I returned the "daylight" LED bulbs to Home Depot, I then ordered the 65 watt equivalent 2700k soft white. It was a very good deal $50 for 6 (I needed 6). The color matches closely, can't really tell any difference to my other CFL and fluorescent fixtures in the room--it really was noticeably different. The initial cost very reasonable and the cost savings a great incentive. I know they are brighter than my 65 watt incandescents, but I can't really tell. At least I had a chance to try out the much brighter and whiter "daylight" LEDs, but they just wouldn't work for me. I found out later that Home Depot had an in store comparison display set up, but I think you almost have to experience them in real life. So, it was really simple to just unscrew the incandescent bulbs and then screw in the LEDs. If it had been necessary to put in new LED specific can lights it would not have been worth it.

Choose 2700K and higest color rendering index lamps you can get for the closest match to incandescent. It's best to closely match for this type of use.

We also are in CA and had to do CFLs and I'm actually surprised by how much I like them (and how few people realize they're fluorescent---only the inspector said "Oh, okay, fluorescent" when I turned them on, but most everyone else thinks we put them in after getting our permit finaled). We have CFLs throughout the house and have had mixed experiences, and I'd say the big factors are: 1) Get good quality bulbs. We needed high wattage (150W equivalent) in the special GU24 socket, so I had to custom order them from a specialty place for far more than I'd ever spent on lightbulbs ($25 each or something??), but the bulbs are so much better than the cheap ones we get at the hardware store---no buzzing! Steady light! They still take a few seconds to warm up to full light, but I think that's just a fluorescent thing. But they are worlds above the other CFLs in the house, which are a mix of super cheap bulbs and Philips bulbs (which I bought to see if "expensive" bulbs were better, back before I knew what "expensive bulbs" meant!) 2) Color temperature. I did lots of research on this and got 2700K bulbs, which aren't too different from the incandescents in the room (a little whiter vs. yellower). You can see the difference, but people don't notice it unless I turn them on at the same time for comparison. 3) Opaque shades---ours are schoolhouse fixtures, and it diffuses the light so it's a lot less harsh than traditional fluorescent fixtures with tubes. We didn't get fluorescent dimmers because the other fixtures in our house are dimmers and I *hate* the CFL dimmable bulbs, but learned afterwards that you can get dimmable light fixtures and switches that are designed for fluorescent and supposedly don't have these problems to the same degree that retrofitted conventional fixtures do. I have no idea if this is actually true or not. I expected to use the fixtures with the incandescents a lot, though (designed to double some of what the overhead lighting covered, and provide task lighting) but am surprised to find that I only turn them on once a week a most. We use only the fluorescents for general lighting, and it gets just about all of the counters with more than enough light to work by. I end up using the incandescents mainly to leave a low light on if we're going out or someone's coming home late.