LED light bulbs are the future. They're better for the environment and the pocket book. But for some people, certain LEDs lights — particularly holiday lights—are also a problem. They flicker in a way that causes headaches, nausea and other discomfort. Today, we visit the "Flicker Queen" to learn why LEDs flicker — and what you can do about it.Wondering about other quirks of lighting and engineering? Email us at
[email protected] – we might cover it on a future episode!
what a fucking boring world we’ve made. Flashing lights give people seizures and shit, but sure, we can just pretend that’s not a problem and make all the lights flicker instead of learning how to make an LED dimmer. Fuck it! Obviously nothing matters anyway. That’s what we as a society are apparently saying. Woo, capitalism.
You know incandescent bulbs flicker, right? Same with CRTs. The bulbs flicker at ~60Hz. CRTs at ~30 fps.
I’m not saying flickering isn’t a problem but don’t act like things didn’t flicker before.
Fluorescent lights are the absolute worst with the flickering, and they have been around for decades. I actually prefer LEDs because they seem to be able to output a wider range of light, instead of making everything look yellow, which is where the “warm glow” comes from.
Incandescent bulbs don’t visibly immediately transition to a harsh on/off state like LEDs do when operating at the same frequency.
Incandescent bulbs are still burning and emitting light during that brief period of “off” time, and CRTs have a similar “effect” that allow the interlaced lines to display smoothly on the screen AFAIK, although I will admit CRT flicker is much more noticeable