Daylight balanced lighting and film stock are designed to work at around 5500 degrees Kelvin, a temperature similar to that of light on an average day.

When shooting with daylight-balanced film, daylight-balanced lighting should be used to ensure a consistent white point in the resulting footage.

In modern digital video work, setting a specific on-set temperature is less important since a white point can be set during the debayering process in post. Nonetheless, rating lights as daylight or tungsten still ensures consistency in the lighting across the set.