Lighting for Artists
Why is lighting so important for artists? Have you worked on a painting at night, only to wake up the next day and realize that your colors were WAY off? Maybe your painting is reading way too cool and now there doesn’t seem to be any life in it. It has happened to me before and is so discouraging to realize you wasted hours of work.
Not all artists have studios with north facing windows and work-illuminating skylights to paint by. I do most of my painting at night, long after the sun has set. Luckily, I’ve learned that technology allows us to find artificial light sources that mimic natural daylight and are optimal for creating art.
There are a lot of science-y words you will come across if you are trying to find the best studio lighting, so I am going to simplify it for you.
First up, the Kelvin (K) scale is used to measure the color temperature of lights. The higher on the K scale, the more blue/cool the light that is cast. The lower on the K scale, the more orange/warm the light will appear. Look for lighting around 5500K for studio lights, which offers a good balance of warm and cool and mimics midday daylight.
Next, you have to consider CRI, short for Color Rendering Index. This measures how well light sources are able to illuminate the color of an object accurately. Anything with a CRI rating 90 or above is considered to be good while under 80 is poor. So look for a CRI of 90+.
A couple of other things to note: Lumens measures the light source’s intensity, or how much light is actually produced. A strong light will appear dimmer if you have a large studio or if the light source is farther away from your work, so consider this when factoring in the Lumens and deciding how many light sources are needed.