Take deLIGHT in Colours

Many contemporary approaches to museum lighting are oriented towards the fulfilment of qualitative standards, in order to provide visitors with a well-lit space and visual comfort, failing to consider that the surround and the background of the exhibit have a huge impact on visitors’ visual perception of artworks. Moreover, lighting design in art exhibitions seldom highlights the uniqueness of each painting or achieve a real enhancement of its colours, in order to provide the museum visitors with the best visual experience, in terms of both visual comfort and enjoyment of the show. This project aims to analyse the factors affecting the visual perception of painted artworks displayed in museum settings and to establish, through a survey, whether there is a preference pattern for the observers. The experiment was conducted at the Light & Lighting Laboratory of KU Leuven Technology Campus Gent, recreating a simple museum scene and conducting a survey. The study investigated the influence of three factors: the Correlated Colour Temperature (CCT) of a LED spotlight, used as accent lighting on the paintings, the lightness of the background and the overall hue content of the paintings. The purpose of the study was to determine a scheme able to provide, depending on the main colours of the paintings and the visual effect required, the most suitable background lightness and colour temperature of the light source.status: publishe