LED Lighting and Color Rendering Index ConsiderationsThe Color Rendering Index is a measure of how faithfully light from a source will reproduce colors. Incandescent bulbs have a CRI of 100 - which is a "perfect score." CFLs are worse when it comes to reproducing colors.
CFLs have not been able to replace incandescent bulbs despite heavy promotion. There are CFLs that produce warm light. But to produce a warm light the glass coating of a CFL has to be doped with additives that essentially absorb light in one part of the spectrum and emit light in another. This further reduces the CFL's lighting efficiency.
LED lights are in a different league altogether. If you look at images produced by a LED projector, the vibrant colors reproduced and its superiority over centuries old incandescent technology becomes apparent. LED's outperform all other technologies in energy efficiency, they comprehensively outclass them in light quality as well.
The only reason incandescent lights have a CRI of 100 is because when CRI standards were put in place incandescent light was the only source of artificial light known. Regulators just could not foresee that one day LED's will be able to produce better quality light than incandescent bulbs. They have a CRI in the 80's because incandescent bulb with a CRI of 100 is the standard. Now that standard itself is under scrutiny. There is a debate to change the standards to reflect the reality of today's lighting technology.
Even if you consider CRI to be reliable because that is all that we have at present a CRI in the 80's denotes excellent quality light. In fact human eye finds it difficult to distinguish light that has a CRI in the high 70's from that produced by incandescent bulbs.
In user trials in United States, users were unable to distinguish between incandescent and LED lights. For the user the most important considerations are that the light should be of good quality and affordable. LED's work out to be much cheaper than incandescent bulbs due to their significant savings in utility bills.