Lighting & Automation
Tunable White
Also called: CCT tuning, circadian lighting
Lighting whose colour temperature can be adjusted — typically 2200K to 6500K — so a space can run cool and alert during the day and warm in the evening.
Tunable white is specified for how a space feels and performs across a day: cooler, brighter light supports focus in the morning, warmer light suits evening service and residential wind-down. In hospitality it is as much a design tool as a technical one.
It requires committed hardware and control. Fixtures need tunable drivers, control needs a second channel per zone, and the schedule needs programming and seasonal review. Retrofitting tunable white into fixed-CCT fixtures is not possible, so it is a design-stage decision.
Related terms
- Lighting Scene
- A saved combination of light levels, colour temperatures, and shade positions across a space, recalled by one button, schedule, or sensor event.
- DALI
- A digital lighting protocol where every fixture has an address on a two-wire bus, allowing individual control, grouping in software, and status reporting back to the controller.
- 0-10V Dimming
- An analog dimming method where a low-voltage control signal from 0 to 10 volts tells a driver or ballast what output level to produce, separate from the load wiring.
More Lighting & Automation terms
Support305 in the press
All press coverageNeed this specified correctly?
Our engineers will review your drawings or quote and tell you exactly where Tunable White belongs in the design.
Talk to an engineer