Making walls work with light
Use illuminated walls as a central element of your lighting design. Vertical light shapes the character of a space and makes the architecture clearly legible. Deploy wallwashing in the museum in a targeted way. This is how you stage artworks, improve orientation, and make key points easier to find.
Make spaces appear larger. Evenly illuminated walls create a sense of spaciousness, increase the perception of brightness, and enhance visual comfort. Emphasize surfaces with grazing light. This reveals textures, reliefs, and materiality, allowing them to be experienced in all their quality.
Define spaces through vertical lighting. It supports the way a space is used, guides the eye, and helps visitors discover information quickly and easily.
Creating orientation with wallwashing
Use bright surfaces as visual points of orientation. On entering the museum, the eye perceives the brightest surface first and automatically attributes significance to it. Stage information desks in front of brightly washed walls. This makes them instantly recognizable as points of contact and helps visitors find their way more easily.
Bring out architectural axes. Wallwashing clearly reveals spatial directions, functional levels, and transitions. They lead to the exhibition, the reception, or other destinations. Illuminated walls structure large buildings and make important spaces intuitively easy to find.
Create clearly defined entrance areas. In foyers, vertical lighting provides orientation, presence, and a welcoming first impression.
Creating brightness with wallwashing
Use vertical surfaces to make spaces appear brighter. The foyer is unquestionably already part of the museum. At the same illuminance, illuminated walls create a far greater impression of brightness than horizontal surfaces. So use wallwashing in a targeted way.
Because walls lie within the natural field of vision, they shape the perceived brightness of a space. Pay attention to the reflectance of the surface. Light-colored walls reinforce the impression of brightness particularly efficiently.
Dark or rough materials require a higher illuminance to achieve an effect comparable to that of a white wall. Exposed concrete, for example, requires twice the illuminance of a white wall.
Brick and dark wood even require six times the illuminance. With wallwashing you create bright, pleasant, and visually generous spaces.
