Yellow and White Fog Lights: Which Are Better?

Driving on a foggy road is dangerous and can cause fatal accidents.

Fog is actually a kind of cloud that forms on the earth’s surface. It consists of tiny water droplets and ice particles that appear when the temperature drops. When driving in fog, you need the assistance of fog lights. So which color fog light is best in foggy weather?

Both low/high beam headlights and fog lights were yellow, as almost all older vehicles were equipped with headlights containing halogen bulbs. However, today, most of the luxury segment vehicles have xenon or LED lamps and these lamps emit white light. Fog lights emit yellow light, although most vehicles use white-colored lights in their low-beam and high-beam headlights. (There are also vehicles in which white LED lights are used in the fog lights.) What could be the reason for the yellow color preference in the fog lights?

While driving, you may feel that some colors calm your eyes. Others may make you angry. This is because the human eye processes different colors of light differently.

White light is actually a kind of blue light with a high amount of blue in it. Blue light has a very short wavelength and is difficult to detect by the human eye. Blue light hits the front of our eyes, while yellow light focuses on the right spot on the retina. This makes it easy to handle. Yellow light is less irritating to the eyes, so it can be said to improve eyesight. For this reason, yellow fog lights are preferred by vehicle drivers, especially in bad weather conditions.

There is another reason why yellow lights are used in fog lights. When there is fog, the water droplets act like a mirror and reflect the light produced by the headlights back into the driver’s eyes. This is why driving in fog poses a real driving hazard. Many drivers believe that yellow light penetrates fog better. However, this has a very different explanation. When we see any object in blue light due to the structure of the human eye, a faint blue glow appears around it. This is called glare. Studies show that blue light causes drivers to complain of annoying glare. Blue or white light against snow or fog can be dazzling to the eyes and tire you out in a short time. Yellow lights should be used to reduce the glare effect.

In summary; we can say that using yellow light in fog lights would be the right choice.

The main purpose of using fog lights is to illuminate the road surface. For this reason, another important issue other than the light color is that the fog lights are at the appropriate height. Fog occurs at a height of approximately 60 cm from the ground, so fog lights should be positioned at a height of 30 to 60 cm.