They definitely don't need red light. People use red lights for nighttime heat under the mistaken impression that reptiles can't see red, so you can watch them without them knowing. But ball pythons actually can see red light. If you don't believe me, try flashing the lamp at your snake's face and see if you can get a reaction. If the snake reacts, it can obviously see that light.
So if you want to give your snake actual darkness at night you need a bulb that produces no visible light at all. A ceramic heat emitter is essentially that. You screw it into a regular socket, and it makes a lot of heat, but no visible light.
The other reason why a CHE is better than an incandescent bulb of any color is that you can use it with a thermostat, which will turn it on and off as needed in order to keep the cage at the right temperature. If you did that with an incandescent bulb, you'd have this light flickering on and off all the time until the light bulb just burned out. That means you can have a CHE at a higher wattage than you actually need, and it won't overheat the cage - the thermostat will control it. But if your room gets colder, and you need more heat to get the right temperature in the cage, you'll have enough capacity to achieve that and you won't need to touch a thing - it will just adjust automatically, as needed.
Then whatever you do for light for the sake of a day/night cycle can be totally independent of heat.
The UV bulbs people talk about when they talk about providing UV are fluorescent and not at all the same as a black incandescent bulb. The black bulb won't hurt your snake either, but again - your snake can still see it just like you can. So it's darker than a bright light, but it's not actually all the way dark.
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