How What Temperature and Gamma should I set my monitor to?

When profiling and calibrating monitors, one question we are regularly asked concerns the most appropriate settings for 'colour temperature' and 'gamma'. Our experience has led us to recommend a white point setting (temperature) of 6500 K and a gamma of 2.2.

Although there are no absolute rules and standards for monitor calibration, three of the recognised 'gurus' of colour management, Bruce Fraser, Chris Murphy and Fred Bunting also concur with TypeMaker's recommendation. Their book, Real World Colour Management goes on to give some of the reasons behind the recommendations:

White Point/Temperature
Recommending a white point of 6500 K (roughly equivalent to D65) for your monitor may appear to be at odds with other advice that suggests viewing originals and proofs with 5000 K (D50) lighting in a viewing booth.

However, firstly consider that the default temperature on most monitors is 9300 K and changing this to 5000K (i.e. the same as a viewing booth) will result in a monitor that is too yellow. This is because achieving a 5000 K white point is done by reducing the brightness/contrast and thereby limiting the strength of the guns dramatically. This change is often such a culture shock to the user that they find it difficult to work under.

With your monitor set to 6500K, the next step is to adjust the brightness control on your viewing booth to match your monitor. The easiest way to do this is to display a totally white image on screen and have a sheet of white paper in the viewing booth. When the user views an image on their 6500K monitor and has a proof in their 5000K viewing booth the eye can easily adapt to the brightness of the white point in the booth as they move from monitor to booth, therefore allowing the user to easily evaluate the image on the proof.

Gamma
Traditionally, Apple Macintosh's have always had their monitor gamma set to 1.8 and Windows-based PCs have been set to 2.2.
A gamma of 1.8 worked well in a non-colour managed workflow as the monitor was set to have similar tone reproduction to a black and white printer. Today, with colour management in place, a gamma of 2.2 will produce the smoothest gradients and the least colour banding – it is also generally more pleasing to the eye.

The Final Word
Having made our recommendations, it is important that you feel comfortable with the settings chosen. As long as you have an accurate monitor profile, if you are happier with different gamma and white point settings from our recommendation, that's fine if it works for you, leave it!