Using red + green + blue Christmas LEDs to form white light

For a few years now I've been lighting our bedroom mainly with white
Christmas lights strung across the ceiling. They've gotten pretty dim
and burned out by now, and need replacing. But they seem to heat the
room up quite a bit in summer, plus I'm getting somewhat bored with
them, so I'd like to try something a little different.

Red, green, and blue light is supposed to stimulate the red, green, and
blue cones in the eye to give the sensation of white in combination, so
I thought it might be nice to use strings of those colors, rather than
white strings. I think it'd be interesting to see colored lights when
you look up at the ceiling, but essentially white down below, where the
light is better mixed. But it seems like a bad idea to use
conventional incandescent lighting for that, since each bulb produces a
full spectrum of light which is then selectively filtered by the bulb
color coating, resulting in dimmer light, warmer room, more
electricity, sadder polar bears, etc.

It's my understanding, however, that LED Christmas lights are very
efficient, more so since the colored ones only give out narrow-spectrum
light. So I think I'd like to use them. But I have no idea about the
relative intensities of the R, G, and B that LEDs give of, and thus how
well they'll "fool" the cones. (And I see people complaining that
"white" LEDs often seem more blue than white.) Yeah, I know, I could
just buy three strings and check it out for myself, but before doing
that I thought I'd ask whether anyone else has tried this before, or
has any ideas on the subject. In particular, is there any way to get
output specs for the strings, and use that somehow?

Also, does anyone know how many LED lights one can safely attach to an
outlet?

And on a semi-related concept, after reading about how LED computer
monitors work, the question occurs to me: would it be better for screen
longevity and power consumption to use a desktop background that's all
white, or all black? Or doesn't it make any difference?

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Outdoor Christmas Tree With Lights Not In Series?
    ... I can surely purchase C7 bulbs that consume 7 watts as well as going as ... on strings to old for any ... specifications to extent of actual power consumption, ... Maybe not much out of the ballpark - I figure that if the LEDs have any ...
    (alt.home.repair)
  • Re: Just checking if my thinking is right on an automotive LED lighting design
    ... >> per string and limiting resistor is a good route. ... The cost of the LEDs is trivial. ... > for a parking light and the bright filament for intermittent use ... I can probably run twenty strings of 6 LEDs ...
    (sci.electronics.basics)
  • Re: X-10 Mister House Motion sensor problems
    ... Mom and Dad who need more than a dimmed bulb hallway bulb. ... I changed over to the LED strings last Christmas, to save wattage and the X10 appliance would not turn off the 5 strings of 50 each bulbs. ... Ergo, we needed a night light for the whole hall, and the LEDs hung on adhesive cup hooks at the ceiling provide an unobtrusive ghostly light. ... I will wire that to an existing attic light switch and replace the existing attic lights with CFLs at the same time. ...
    (comp.home.automation)
  • Re: LED backlight driver
    ... The LEDs are arranged as 5 series strings of 9 white LEDs. ... The brightness needs to be adjustable down to 2 mA per string. ... feedback pin connected to current-sensing resistor. ...
    (sci.electronics.design)
  • Re: LED Xmas lights and X10.. the final solution...
    ... as a string of the mini-lights take more power than something like 10 strings of LEDS. ... Inside, however, it's all LED - had a chuck of mini-lights go out on my "pre-lit" tree, and I now have it pre-lit with LEDS. ... The LED strings I got do allow you to interchange lights, and while you can get the white strings, to get a string of all red, you need to get about 5 strings and use the reds all in one.. ...
    (comp.home.automation)