PrinzII--Here's my 2 cents worth about the Kelvin vs. lumen situation, along with some other ramblings related to lighting. This will put a lot of people to sleep, but some might find it helpful:
Fluorescent lamps are typically rated at the same initial & mean lumen output for a given lamp size / wattage with no lumen adjustment made for color (Kelvin). The *real* brightness will be the same for a given physical size and wattage of a lamp.
HOWEVER, your eye will typically perceive the same lumen output to be "brighter" with a higher Kelvin (shorter wavelength) lamp. It's just the way most people are wired internally.
A good example of this would be on a police car with a split red/blue lightbar on top. Same lamp or strobe tube inside, but the blue side of the light is typically "seen" first due to the way the mind processes the shorter wavelength of the blue light, even though the red side actually reduces the lumen output less (e.g.-it's brighter) than the blue side as the light passes through the colored lens.
That being said, I still recommend that a person buy whatever Kelvin output that they personally like best. The one area that I am a believer in spending some extra $$$ is for the higher CRI lamps. The higher CRI is one of those things that you won't immediately notice, but most people will come to wonder how they got by without them after working under the improved CRI for a while.
In closing, I'll say that answers in lighting are a lot like trying to pin down that question that comes up every so often--"What's the best
AIO / LSP / (whatever) for my car?" Answer, "Whatever works best for you!" as there are too many variables for there to be a finite answer. Go to a high end lighting center that can show off the effects of different Kelvin & CRI of lamps in a demo area and then buy what feels right to you--you'll swear off those $1/each tubes from the big-box stores!
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