The spectra of the bi-color and tri-color phosphor-converted white LED were optimized in the neutral correlated color temperature of 4 870 K with consideration of Stokes shift energy loss.The results showed that a high luminous efficacy of radiation up to 483 lm/W could be attained in the case of the white LED composed of blue chip and YAG phosphor but with a poor color quality and 83.9% Stokes efficiency.When a narrow-band red phosphor or LED chip was added to the bi-color white LED,a good color rendering index of 94.7 was gained with a reduced luminous efficacy of radiation 343 lm/W and a Stokes efficiency of 84.4%.Later,we characterized the performance of tunable-color-temperature tri-color white LED.It was found that the color rendering index was better when the correlated color temperature exceeded 4 000 K.