Museums & Galleries

Gallery lighting is color rendering taken to its conclusion. The work has to appear as the artist mixed it, which means 95+ CRI, strong R9, and consistency between every fixture illuminating the same piece — a two-strip wash where one strip is a bin cooler than the other is visible on a flat canvas.

Conservation sets limits the aesthetics have to live inside. Illuminance targets for works on paper and textiles are low, cumulative exposure is tracked over years, and dimming down a bright fixture is not the same as specifying a dim one — the trade is between beam control and the amount of light landing on the object.

LEDs help on one front by default: there is no ultraviolet or infrared in the beam, so the damage mechanisms that made halogen a conservation problem are largely absent.