Daylight Wavelength Technology™ Is your light making small print harder to read?

Brightness is only the beginning. Daylight Wavelength Technology™ gives you the full spectrum of daylight, so you see more detail and truer colour in your book, your photographs or your sewing.

The head of an HD Pro, switched on, with the focus ring around its lens
  • 99.4% keep theirs for the difference it makes.
  • Recommended by 500+ opticians.
  • Five-year warranty, backed by forty years of making lights.
A Serious Light shining on a chart that compares its colours with daylight and with ordinary LEDs

Daylight gives you a broad spread of colour.

By a window on a clear morning, small print looks sharp and close shades are easy to tell apart. An ordinary LED starts with a blue chip, so colours are missing from its light, red most of all, and your eyes work harder to make out the same detail.

Daylight Wavelength Technology™ starts with a purple LED instead of a blue one, so you get that full spread of colour indoors and thread, paint and jigsaw pieces look true long after the sun has gone.

It started with Alex's mum and thirty-seven lamps.

About forty years ago, Alex Pratt's mum was losing her sight to macular degeneration, and the lamp by her bed no longer gave her enough light to make out her book.

He built her a light that brought daylight indoors, bright and clear enough for her to read by again, and we have built every Serious Light since around the same idea.

She asked for a better reading light. I bought thirty-seven lamps and took them apart to find out what was missing, then built her one of my own.

Alex Pratt OBE, Founder
Read the Serious story
Alex Pratt OBE checking the head of a Serious Light at his desk

The difference is in the mix of colours.

We measured the light engine in the HD Original and HD Pro against an ordinary LED sample.

Two measured spectra: an ordinary LED sample with one tall spike in the blue and little deep red, and our HD light engine spread across the whole visible range, highest at 625 nm, just inside the red.
Both lights were measured on the same instrument. Each curve is drawn to its own highest point, so it shows the balance of colour inside each light rather than how bright it is.

Colour fidelity, out of 100

98 Daylight Wavelength Technology™

83 The ordinary LED sample

Deep red, out of 100

92 Daylight Wavelength Technology™

40 The ordinary LED sample

Colour fidelity is the TM-30 score and deep red is the CRI R9 score, each out of 100, for one tested sample of each light. Neither is a percentage of daylight.

Read the technical report

All three of these lights are built on Daylight Wavelength Technology™.

The HD Original and the HD Pro give you up to 12x more light on your page than a 60W bulb, and the HD Essential gives you 8x more light on your page.

High Definition Essential Floor Light

High Definition Essential Floor Light

£299.99

Read under one wide beam of daylight, and dim it by holding one button.

  • 8x more light on your page*
  • Fixed wide beam
  • Press-and-hold dimming
  • 30-day home trial
Choose the HD Essential
High Definition Original Floor LightMost popular

High Definition Original Floor Light

£349.99

Shape the beam from small print to a full newspaper, and set the brightness with the thumbwheel.

  • Up to 12x more light on your page*
  • Shapeable beam
  • Thumbwheel dimming
  • 90-day home trial
Choose the HD Original
High Definition Pro Floor Light

High Definition Pro Floor Light

From £399.99

Read away from a socket with the optional battery, or dim it with the optional remote.

  • Everything the HD Original offers, plus:
  • Optional remote
  • Optional battery
Choose the HD Pro

*Compared with a traditional 60W bulb.

Not sure which light to choose?

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What do you love doing?

What people ask about Daylight Wavelength Technology™.

Is it really that different from an ordinary LED?

Most people see the difference the first time they switch it on. Measured on the same instrument, an ordinary LED sample scored 83 out of 100 for colour fidelity and the light engine in the HD Original and HD Pro scored 98. On deep red, the hardest part of the range for a white LED to get right, the ordinary sample scored 40 and ours scored 92.

Read the spectrum report
What does it do differently?

It gives you the full spectrum of daylight, so you see fine detail clearly and colours as they really are.

Is it just a brighter bulb?

No. A brighter bulb gives you more of the same light, with the same mix of colours inside it. Daylight Wavelength Technology™ changes the mix itself, which helps you tell similar shades apart, and Serious Lights are bright as well: the HD Original and the HD Pro give you up to 12x more light on your page than a 60W bulb.

Can I get the same light from a daylight bulb?

A daylight bulb is sold on its colour temperature, which makes the light look whiter and bluer. Colour temperature does not measure the mix of colours inside the light, and the mix is what Daylight Wavelength Technology™ is built around. You will only find it in Serious Lights.

Which lights use it?

The HD Original, the HD Pro and the HD Essential all use it, and so do the HD Essential Gemini, the HD Essential Wall Light, the HD Mini and the HD ROAM.

How can I tell if it makes a difference for me?

Try it at home, and read a page of your book under your own lamp and then under a Serious Light. The HD Original and HD Pro have a 90-day home trial and the HD Essential has 30 days, and if it is not for you, we collect it free from any UK mainland address.

How the home trial works

See the difference at home.

Compare it with your usual lamp on a page of your own book.

90 daysHD Original and HD Pro

30 daysHD Essential

If it is not right for you, we collect it free from any UK mainland address and refund you.

Choose your light
The head of a Serious Light, switched on

Prefer to talk it through?

Tell us what you would like to know about the light, and we will talk it through.

0800 032 9366