[kijin]

I grew up in Korea and moved to the West (USA & Canada) in my late teens. I found the lighting very annoying almost as soon as I stepped foot in my first dorm room. Even when I rented my own place later on, I could never make my living room look "proper", since none of the apartments I've lived in had any lighting fixtures in the living room. No amount of indirect lighting can compensate for the lack of several thousand lumens, daylight color, right in the middle of the ceiling. I can see why other people find 2700K 60W "relaxing", but to me it feels like perpetual twilight, some sort of reenactment of Rembrandt's paintings.

Ditto for "desk lamps" that can't evenly illuminate two Letter-sized sheets of paper side by side (the typical dimensions of an open textbook), let alone the whole desk. To this day I still don't understand why students buy those. Maybe they just put them on their bedside tables in case they need to find their way to the bathroom at night.

On the other hand, everyone's computer screen is too bright for me. My screens are usually set to 25%-40% brightness unless I'm using it outside on a sunny day. So I suppose people do have varying tastes about illumination.