Even photographers don't use Kelvins the way when they are selecting lighting.
For examle, when you buy lighting, you might want 'daylight' color balance. The daylight is about 5700ºK... that's the actual temperature of our Sun -- a G2 class star.
If you hate the "white" LED light bulbs with the pale blue cast and prefer the light bulbs that resemble what you had with an incandescant light with a golden cast, then you're probably shopping for something in the 2500-3000K range.
If you look at Orion in the winter, you might recognize the stars Betelgeuse and Rigel. Betelgeuse is a red super-giant star with a temperature of 3500K. But Regel - the blue star - is about 11,000K.
If you own a telescope, then during the summer months you can point it to Alberio - the head of the constellation Cygnus the swan. But Alberio is actually a double-star and it's one of the most interesting doubles becuse of the very strong color contrast between the two stars. One is definitely blue, the other is gold. The "gold" star is just a tiny bit over 4000K. The "blue" star is a a little over 13,000K. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albireo).
Higher color temperatures are bluer... not redder. Hotter, higher-energy sources pump out wavelengths of light that repeat more frequently. That produces a bluer color. Lower energy sources produce wavelengths that repeat less-often... each single wave is longer. That produces a reddish color.
When you buy lighting systems, the color temperatures represented in Kelvins are basically correct for photographic lighting... it's only incorrect when you deal with post-processing software such as DPP or Lightroom.
Tim Campbell
5D III, 5D IV, 60Da
