Using time-resolved photoluminescence and excited-state absorption spectroscopy, we investigate the chain length dependence of the energies of the singlet (S-1) and triplet (T-1 and T-n) excited states of a homologous series of conjugated 9,9-dihexylfluorene-2,7-diyl oligomers (nF, n = 1, 3, 5, 7, similar to 50) in frozen solution. The energies of the optical transitions in absorption, fluorescence, phosphorescence, and triplet-triplet absorption initially decrease linearly with the reciprocal number of repeat units, but saturate at n >= 5. The saturation and dispersion of the optical transition energies indicate that the T-1 state is only slightly more confined than the S-1 state. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.