Why are street lights orange?

Question

Its extremely ugly and doesn't light up the street very well at all. What ever happened to those white ones that they had? Those were so much nicer.

Answer 1

There are two kinds of orange street lights -- high pressure sodium, and low pressure sodium. Low pressure sodium lights are extremely efficient, but do a bad job of showing color because the radiation is almost entirely the 589 nanometer sodium D line. Such lights are often used in areas near astronomical observatories, so that the observatory can filter out the D line light scattered by the atmosphere. More common (but considerably less efficient) are high pressure sodium lamps. These emit a broad spectrum of radiation in addition to the D lines, so give much better color rendition. Fixtures using such lamps are available at any large hardware store.

Answer 2

The orange ones (really amber) are much cheaper to run and that energy cost is significant lately. They got rid of those costly standard (white) ones. Around here some towns offered a choice of shutting off half of the white street lights or changing over to new amber ones - cheaper amber won.

Answer 3

Well, if you go to the store and get an anti-bug light for your pourch. The light it shines is orange. The street lights are now orange to keep bugs from flying around them so much, something about orange the bugs just don't like.

Answer 4

Mercury Vapor lights

Answer 5

Why Are Street Lights Orange

Answer 6

They were Mercury based,or they were more expensive or the city is to cheap to buy good ones lol...

Answer 7

becuase the yellow work better in the fog

Answer 8

Those were mercury based and mercury is bad

Answer 9

They may be orange where you are, but in New Orleans, they aren't.

Answer 10

So you can see when there is fog.