Kelvin to RGB Converter

About this calculator

A light source's color temperature in Kelvin describes the color a theoretical black-body radiator would glow at that temperature — around 1900K for candlelight, 5500K for daylight, 10000K+ for deep blue overcast sky. This converter approximates the corresponding RGB value using Tanner Helland's widely-used piecewise polynomial fit to the black-body locus, which is precise enough for screen and lighting work without requiring the full Planckian locus and CIE color-matching integrals.

Photographers setting white balance, lighting designers choosing LED fixtures, and web/game developers coding a day-night cycle or a “warm/cool” theme toggle use Kelvin-to-RGB conversion to translate a familiar temperature value (like “3000K warm white” versus “6500K daylight white” on an LED bulb's packaging) into the hex or RGB triplet their software or shader actually needs, since design tools work in RGB but lighting and camera specs are labeled in Kelvin.