Looking for the ideal lighting situation in the Artist Studio?

Can you do better than north light?

 

“We artists think of reds as warm and blues as cool, but this has more to do with our collective experience with flames (that burn) and ice (that chills) and not so much with light temperature. North light from a clear sky is even hotter and bluer than direct sunlight—around 7500K.

The color of a light source is measured in degrees Kelvin. For example, the 100-watt bulb in the lamp on your nightstand emits a yellowish light with a color temperature around 2500K. A photographer’s 250-watt photoflood emits a bluer light with a color temperature around 3200K. Even daylight has a color temperature, and it’s even bluer, and therefore hotter.

 

What does all this mean for the artist looking for the ideal lighting situation? North light will throw a bluish light upon the palette, making pigments look cooler than they are. (Remember our collective experience mentioned above—bluer looks cooler.) North light accentuates blues and subdues greens and reds. To warm things up, the artist may overcompensate. If one of his paintings ends up in someone’s dining room lit with 100-watt incandescent bulbs, the paintings will look warmer than the artist intended. By the same token, if the artist paints under too yellow a light, he may overcompensate in the other direction, and paint with too cool a palette. Put this painting in that same dining room, and the piece will look cold and uninviting.

The ideal color temperature for light is somewhere between warm and cool.

Experts say that 5000K lighting (also called D50 lighting and a standard in the industry) has an even amount of all colors in it. It’s used in the printing industry for viewing press sheets, since printed images have many colors to be evaluated. Of course, most homes don’t have D50; most have yellow (cool) incandescent lighting or blue (warm) fluorescent lighting. If you don’t have D50 lighting, try at least to paint under a mix of cool and warm light. And then, try to view your paintings in a variety of lighting situations to find problems and to see how they’ll look to a patron or on a client’s walls.”

Lighting suppliers

The following companies make “full-spectrum” lighting suitable for art studios. Some offer only fluorescent lamps, while others also offer incandescent lamps.

Most make lights in the “averaged daylight” color temperature of around 5000K, but some go up to 7500K. Call or visit their websites for full details on products.

 

Ott-Lite TrueColor Lighting—“natural sunlight” via fluorescent

800/842-8848
www.ottlite.com

Verilux Natural Spectrum—can switch between different wattages, “full spectrum,”

both fluorescent and incandescent

888/544-4865
www.verilux.net

Ultralux—Ultralux and BlueMax—dimmable “full-spectrum” fluorescent
888/845-6597
www.ultraluxlamps.com, www.bluemaxlighting.com

Vita-Lite, Optima, Color Matching, Daylight 65—fluorescent

1-800-289-3876
 www.duro-test.com

Chromalux, Lumachrome—incandescent and fluorescent

800/354-1044
www.lumiram.com

From “Everything Is Illuminated”  By Michael Chesley Johnson, The Artist’s Magazine, October 2007 issue