I read somewhere that the light from incandescent bulbs reproduce better the colors than fluorescent lamps. I became a little confused because the light from incandescent bulbs are yellowish - reddish (color temperatures from 2500 K to 3500 K) and the light from daylight (5000K) fluorescent lamps seems to be more natural than light from incandescent bulbs.
I had already noticed that some RAW photos taken with light from some fluorescent lamps did not present natural colors, even correcting the white balance. The situation were far worst whith light from mercury vapour lamp and from low-pressure sodium lighting. I did a fast research about the qualities of various kinds of light and I discovered that the color rendition also depends of the spectra of the light source.
The sources with a continuous spectra (like the sun and the incandescent bulbs) reproduces better the colours than the sources with a "discontinuous" (lower level of relative power compared to daylight - except for a few peaks) spectra (e.g. mercury vapour lamp and low-pressure sodium lamp) and I learned about the color rendering index.
The color rendering index (CRI) is a quantitative measure of the ability of a light source to reveal the colors of various objects faithfully in comparison with an ideal or natural light source. Numerically, the highest possible CRI value is 100, and would only be given to a source identical to standardized daylight or a black body (incandescent lamps are effectively black bodies), dropping to negative values for some light sources.
Summarizing and concluding: an ideal light source for a correct color rendering should have both a color temperature similar to daylight (but this can be corrected by the white balance) and a high CRI value.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_rendering_index
http://light-measurement.com/spectra/
http://www.topbulb.com/color-rendering-index
http://lowel.tiffen.com/edu/color_te...mystified.html
http://www.fullspectrumsolutions.com/cri_explained.htm