L.A.'s golden streetlights have turned harsh white. Homeowners aren't happy

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Light and Los Angeles are intrinsically linked.It’s a light that elicits emotion and demands reaction.Filmmaker David Lynch said L.A.’s “muted golden sunshine” was the reason filmmakers flocked here.

In the New Yorker, the writer Lawrence Weschler rhapsodized about the soft glow in the air here, day and night.When watching O.J.

Simpson’s infamous car chase on television from across the country, Weschler burst into tears at the sight of the late afternoon sun cutting through the smog.For decades, L.A.’s hazy blue days and golden pink dusks have given way to nights speckled with golden orange, where amber streetlights twinkle across hills, valleys and coastal plain like stars in the sky.But now, thanks to the harsh LEDs that light much of L.A., an ever-growing number of streets feel more like prison yards when the sun goes down.“I feel like I’m under surveillance in my own home,” Linda Chen said.Chen said her San Fernando Valley home always felt like a haven — a quiet slice of suburbia where she and her family could relax at the end of the day.But a few years ago, city workers swapped the orange sodium streetlights outside her house with cold, blue-light LEDs.Overnight, her once warm, cozy street felt harsh and hostile.

One light shined so brightly into her bedroom that she lost sleep until she installed blackout curtains.“It’s like when you’re on a red-eye flight trying to get some sleep and the person next to you has their reading light on the entire time,” she said.“Not the end of the world, but definitely a nuisance.”Chen is planning to downsize in a few years, but she’s worried that potential buyers will be turned off by the glaring streetlights hanging over the home, and the property’s resale value will take a hit.“I guess we’ll only do open houses during the day,” she quipped.L.A.

was an early adopter of LED.By 2013, the Bureau...