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Comment by golemotron | Hacker News Reader

HN might be the best place to ask. What lights do galleries use? They make the paintings pop.

My house is essentially an art gallery — I had a museum lighting expert do all of the lighting installs and the key thing is going to be the width of the light (correctly focusing the light so it doesn’t spill outside of the painting much,) then color temperature.

The focus of the light is key — by lighting the painting and not lighting the walls around it, that makes it pop a lot more than typically area lighting common in residential applications. Color temperature is also very important. Finally, in my case; my walls are painted a dark, lead-pipe grey so it makes the paintings really jump.

The brand of my lights is Wac Lighting controlled by Lutron dimmers in case you are interested. Color balanced LED. LED used to be inferior for galleries, but the tech has gotten very good (added benefit of running a lot cooler than the old halogen.)

Another huge aspect is the CRI/CQS of your light sources. CRI (Color Rendering Index) and CQS (Color Quality Scale) try to quantify how faithfully colors are represented when a subject is lit.

Generally a higher CRI equals a higher quality light source. A halogen/incandescent lamp has a perfect score, 100. High end LED sources are usually in the range of 95-98, but that number can be gamed, which has lead to the creation of CQS.

https://blog.1000bulbs.com/home/is-color-quality-scale-bette...

CQS is super important. That was a key tool for selecting the LED that we did. Thanks for bringing that up!

Any recommendations on how to find the correct color temperature? Should it maybe be matched with the actual painting (how?) or dialed in to fit the rest of the room (how)?

Typically 3600-3800K. My lights are 3600K. A light meter for photography can give you color temperature, but it will always be printed on the box for your bulbs.

I wouldn’t overthink it.. just as long as you stay out of the 4500K+ range (approaching daylight,) things will look great. The warmth of the 3600K range is great — anything less than that and the warmth of the light starts to affect color rendition, anything more and the light gets bluer and harsher.

Your eyes can be the guide. But having correctly focused light at the correct intensity (not too bright for instance) is key. There are use cases for daylight balance — if you are in a mixed light situation such as a windowed or skylight with abondant sunlight, you might consider going a little cooler on the color temperature — but again, use your eyes.

It can be really fun messing with lighting and art! Good luck.

Thanks for taking the time!

Surely the lighting matters but I think it is only secondary. The thing that's missing in reproductions is the physical texture of the paintings.

I'm thinking super high-end 3D printers in 10 years will solve this problem.

Detail-wise 3d printed reproductions have been decent enough for a while I think. The trickier part is mimicking the texture of complexly layered and blended oil-paint with filaments.

I'm not so certain. Up close, paintings are complex 3D sculptures made from a palette of materials, (not colors), each with varying levels of translucence, different reflective properties, different textures, etc. and they can be combined and moved around in infinitely complex ways.

Might be possible in a few decades, though.

They’re doing this! Read about the restoration of Rembrandt’s The Night Watch (https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/whats-on/exhibitions/operation...). Amazing tech.

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