Why are bmw's interior lights orange, why not blue?!

[///M Jefey]

why are the interior lights orange, and not something calming like blue,...like so

[///M3Hellrot]

pretty cool.......but too much work for me. I like the orange. although, blue would match my stereo head unit.

[woobiee]

i like the orange too but i may have the answer why it is orange and not blue. I was told that in the military they use red/orange lights in flashlights to see a map, etc during the night because our eyes see red/orange lights at our most confortable level. THe color red has the lowest frequency and highest wavelength. So a smart move by BMW to use the color amber. I mean have you noticed that the amber in the car doesnt really distract you at night. My old headunit had blues and whites and that thing blared out and was very distracting.

[E30mademepoor]

Word, my head unit is so annoying at night. I love the amber.

[jron]

damn, that looks sweet. was that hard to change it all? i see the buttons on the obc are blue, but what about the display? i think it would look odd if that was the case.

[Hedoniste]

Why not orange and light orange (a bit yellow) ???

[AngelEye328i]

studies have shown that amber is more easy to a person eyes verus the blue.. imagine driving long distance and staring at nothing but blue.. That would be depressing

[Domi]

Woobie is right and Angeleyes also.

In addition to Angeleyes: blue light would mess up your contrast in the night. Its like when you are somewhere dark and try to see something. After a couple of minutes you can see. But when you look for fraction in a light you loose your total sight in the dark. The blue does a little of that.
So, blue is not safe.

_DOMI_

[Scott May]

yea, but orange i think isent nearly as nice as red...in my dads audi the red is very nice...much better then the oragne in the bimmers

[97e36s52m3]

My friend changed the lights in his 325i to red (like the audis). He's an electrical engineering major, even so it took us two days to do the whole thing. You have to pull out all the circuitboards, remove the orange LEDs and solder in ned ones. Is was a huge pain, but they look nice though, and it only cost around 10 bucks.

[MP525iM]

I love the blue look. I don't drive on long distances for the gauges to annoy me. How did you do that?? Do you have a procedure written up? Hopefully, I will be getting my M3 soon and I would be very interested on how to do that. Any info. would help. Thanks!!

-Mike

[Scott May]

yea i changed all the orange in all my switches to red, it was a bitch all right but overall simple idea. The real problem is in the OBC and the damn air conditioner/heater

[VANOSNinja]

Originally posted by MP525iM
I love the blue look. I don't drive on long distances for the gauges to annoy me. How did you do that?? Do you have a procedure written up? Hopefully, I will be getting my M3 soon and I would be very interested on how to do that. Any info. would help. Thanks!!

-Mike

http://nolimit.to/MYM3/interior_lighting.htm

[villlein]

yeah to repeat whats already been stated, the reason the military has red filters over their flashlights is when they look at the map, the red wonts leave spots in their eyes when the look back to the darkness/terrain. where as yellow, blue, green, purple, and of course white will leave spots in your eyes.

-also why astronomers use red filters, for when they look up at the stars, they dont have to adjust their eyes.

[pete]

red is the dullest of all visible lights, the lowest frequency... thats why red and orange right next to it are great colors... blue is way up in the spectrum...


bmw has used orange since the beggining.