I learned that red is the best color for sleeping, so i'm thinking to use my Hue bulbs also as a red night light on it's lowest brightness. Would this damage it or lower it's lifespan since it will constantly show the same light color (red) during the night?
I read somewhere that the red color is best for falling asleep is that true?
Yes in general red or lower Kelvin temperature is better at night for sleeping. One of the leading theories is that humans had fire long enough to have natural selected for this trait.
You see the sunlight is a bright light that has more blue or a higher Kelvin (this Kelvin is the same place we get temperature of light bulbs from but I digress). Camp fires at night are a much more red color.
We may have been selected for the ones that could sleep well close to the red campfire light in the cold winters
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Would be so happy if someone can help, thanks!!
While blue may be a calming pigment choice for paint, according to Harvard Health, "blue wavelengths—which are beneficial during daylight hours because they boost attention, reaction times, and mood—seem to be the most disruptive at night."
Light of any kind decreases the secretion of melatonin, a hormone that helps you sleep, and light at night particularly messes with your circadian rhythm (your daily biological schedule which is driven by exposure to light and dark). LED lights and those curlicue compact fluorescents emit more blue light waves than old style incandescent bulbs. Fluorescent tubes are sold with coatings that can shift the color away from blue wavelengths.
Harvard recommends using dim red lights for night lights because they are least disruptive to circadian rhythms. In order to improve sleep, they also recommend avoiding looking at bright screens for 2-3 hours before bed and spending as much time in bright light during the day as you can.
Since you have installed LED lights which are known to emit blue wavelengths, perhaps instead of using them at night, you could use them during the day as a "stimulant." At night, choose dim non-LED, non-fluorescent lighting.
Mary Jo's answer is spot on – blue paints are good, blue lights are bad, red lights are good. I was going to add a comment but I have more to say :-)
Avoid blue because it is very high-energy in terms of wavelength.
Red is good because it is very low-energy in terms of wavelength.
Other colors are in between those two endpoints.
The LED stripe you link to has no "pure white" but instead produces its many colors by combinations of red+green+blue. With LED, I only recommend pure red because otherwise you're mixing undesirable colors into the light. I use these pure red LEDs myself at home at night, but at the lowest possible intensity.
One very important aspect of sleep is the absence of light, because light hinders the body's natural ability to produce melatonin which is required for healthy sleep. (The body's ability to produce this degrades over time, which is why old people sleep much less than young.)
The melatonin signal forms part of the system that regulates the sleep–wake cycle by chemically causing drowsiness and lowering the body temperature (Wikipedia)
Blue light is most disruptive because of its wavelength but also because the cells in the eye's retina react to it and the brain believes it's daylight – not good for sleep (google melatonin for details). Have you noticed that blue status LED's are annoyingly bright to look at? That's it precisely.
Red light is least disruptive because it has the lowest wavelength.
Red bonus: Night vision! This is not important by itself of course, but it is helpful nonetheless. Night vision is a very direct indication of whether a light is disruptive or not. There's a reason why cockpits are usually lit with red light: The eye isn't blinded by red light and therefore it preserves night vision. If you look at a red light at night and then into darkness, you can still see. Look at a blue/yellow/green light and your night vision is gone. It can take up to 20 minutes to regain that night vision. In my home, I've lit the path to the bathroom with red LED at night for this exact reason – pilots and seamen would agree :-)
Red is also the color that newborns find most soothing, but my understanding is that it's soothing because it's a familiar color: any light looks red when seen from inside the womb!
More references and details can be found in this software description.