Strategy for the intelligent handling of light in museums
Four tips for museum lighting
ERCO develops luminaires for museums and galleries to render art visible and provide visitors with impressive visual experiences. Within this context it is important to conserve exhibits as well as possible. We offer you four tips for this purpose:
1. Concentrate on vertical lighting
Illuminated vertical surfaces create a bright, generous impression of the room even with low illuminance levels and guide visitors within a controlled light environment. Wallwashing therefore facilitates adaptation and offers orientation. In addition to uniform illumination for paintings, visual relationships are created both within the interior and from the outside to the inside."
2. Create adaptation paths
Only with adapted eyes do we have the visual acuity required for detecting colours, details and structures even at low illuminance levels. Our vision needs several minutes to adjust to the brightness in rooms with light-sensitive exponents after exposure to the lighting level outside, or a foyer flooded with daylight. Therefore guide visitors carefully in darker rooms. Also avoid glare, both in the form of direct glare via luminaires and from reflections on objects.
3. Utilise the specific characteristics of visual perception
People differentiate between each object in their field of view. In museums, in addition to specific informational needs a further fundamental need exists relating to gaining information about the surroundings. Hierarchies in brightness facilitate orientation. Because we interpret the brightest point in our surroundings as the most important, visitors in dark areas of an exhibition can be guided if exhibits insensitive to light are given a high-contrast accent.
4. Design based on the dark room
Accent lighting emphasises paintings and sculptures. The ratio in contrast to the background determines how striking the exhibit appears. Ideal are differences in brightness of 1:5 to 1:10 between the surroundings and the exhibit. With good glare control and an adjusted eye, artworks can be concisely accented with just 50lx. Dark room planes are suitable for increasing contrast perception with extremely low illuminance, enabling the exhibits to be brightly offset in the foreground.