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> Why is it that manufacturers go for blue or bright white LED indicators?

I don't know but I'm sure allergic to red. I don't understand why so many devices are using red for standby or even to indicate work (I'm looking at you Raspberry Pi).

To me red is "blood" and blood is "bad". Red means error.

Thankfully some devices, like ethernet switches, are using proper colors: green for trafic, orange for "degraded" link (say 100 Mbps on a gigabit switch). I look at the rack and there are tens of LEDs and it's all blue, green, orange. That's correct. Zero red. That's what I expect when everything is working fine.

Orange for standby is acceptable, I guess.

I like blue. Maybe not bright blue but blue is way better than red IMO.

If I see something red, it better be an error: alarm / motion detector / garage door opened / whatever.



Funny, I imagine you're pretty young?

For us oldies red is just the normal LED colour since in the 80s this was the only colour that was available. Our alarm clocks, microwave displays, indicator lights and even some watches and calculators used red LEDs :)


> proper colors: green for trafic, orange for "degraded"

I’m color blind and hate this color choice. Damn near impossible to tell apart. Around 8% of men would agree.


Red doesn't bother the eyes in a dark environment.


It's not just bothersome; red is in the sweet spot of visible but doesn't interfere with your night vision.

There's a reason lots of camping lights have a red mode, and why astronomers use it exclusively while observing.

https://stellarium-labs.com/blog/nightmode/


Unfortunately it does bother me. It's so bad I must turn off or at least cover red LEDs before I can sleep. E.g. TVs. Thankfully for our bedroom TV we recently switched to a Sony TV recently which doesn't seem to have a standby LED at all – such a godsend as it can be turned off simply by pressing the remote and it turns off without a standby LED.


It's not bothering your eyes. It's bothering your brain. In a dark room a red light will not make your eyes lose their ability to quickly see in the dark like the other colors do.


For me red is pomegranates. A very happy colour.

I suppose that colour preferences may be cultural.


I don't know: red seems to be the color of blood, a bad omen to witness. Green is the color of grass, quite okay. Blue is the color of the sky and yellow of the sun. Colors are not absolutely random I think, and could just as well cross cultural boundaries. But maybe "preferences" are sort of subjective: China really likes yellow and red a lot more than France for instance, even if they have the same meaning sort of (the red communist flag does suggest the blood of the people for both culture, for instance, and yellow does seem "valuable" for both as well - we like our gold statues just as much in both).




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