Personally I would not use a IR bulb, pythons see roughly from 500 nM to 850 nM this is basically cyan to infrared 700nM being in the middle of the range 700 nM is dark red. I would suggest deep blue as it is in the 400 Nm range and is less visible to pythons.
It is likely any snake will adapt to visual light but if there is a option why not take it?

"In the rod-dominated retina of P. regius, where all cones are scarce, there are so few ultraviolet-sensitive photoreceptors that it is unreasonable to think that they could do much towards creating any kind of detailed visual picture"
THE PHOTORECEPTORS AND VISUAL PIGMENTS IN THE RETINA OF A BOID SNAKE, THE BALL PYTHON (PYTHON REGIUS) A. J. SILLMAN