And yet, the opposite is likely true; yellow lights feel warmer, but white lights make people feel exposed. You generally feel safe from other people in well lit places.

There's research about e.g. subway incidents and safety when they got better / brighter / whiter lights.

When I was growing up my father was pretty frugal, so he was very early on the train of replacing all of our home's lightbulbs with fluorescents. However, I don't think he really understood what color temperatures meant, so he always seemed to buy the bulbs with the higher temperatures. Higher is better, right? So he always went with the super sterile cold 5000K bulbs, and just as you say, home felt like some sort of weird sterile warehouse.