www.lesswrong.com/posts/HJNtrNHf688FoHsHM/guide-to-rationalist-interior-decorati...

This is too narrow: CRI does not apply only to LEDs.

The U.S. Department of Energy defines the Color Rendering Index (CRI) generally as a scale that measures a light source’s ability to render colors the way sunlight does. That definition is not limited to LED products.

Federal law and federal test procedures also show CRI being used for non-LED lamps:

• The U.S. Code defines a category of fluorescent lamps by whether they have a color rendering index of 87 or greater.
• DOE test procedures explicitly include methods for measuring CRI for incandescent lamps.

So while it is true that incandescent lamps are typically around CRI 100, the statement that CRI “only applies to buying LEDs” is incorrect. CRI is a broader lighting metric used across multiple lamp technologies.

This claim is too broad.

U.S. efficiency rules did not mean that companies were categorically forbidden to make all incandescent bulbs. Even after the 2023 phaseout of many inefficient general-service incandescent bulbs, federal law and DOE guidance still recognized multiple exempt incandescent categories.

DOE’s own myth-busting page says the U.S. government is not banning all lightbulbs and that specialized incandescent bulbs remain exempt. The underlying statute likewise lists many excluded incandescent categories, including appliance lamps, bug lamps, reflector lamps, 3-way incandescent lamps, vibration-service lamps, and several decorative bulb shapes.

So the accurate version would be something like: many common general-service incandescent bulbs were being phased out, but incandescent bulbs were not banned across the board.