New studio lighting

I've had a single 70W bulb hanging from a ceiling rose in this room, ever since we got the house and when I made it my studio, I left it as it was but promised myself that one day soon I'd need to change it.

Having a good light source in an art studio is a fundamental requirement, after all we're mostly painting the effects of light on objects, and its probably not until you make the change that you really appreciate how much of an impact it can make on your working environment. Even if your not lighting a still life or human subject to paint from directly, you still need to see the paint on your palette and the colours you are laying down on the canvas, in the correct lighting conditions.

Light bulbs

My single 70W halogen bulb was producing about 1,300 lumens at a temperature of 3,000K (Kelvin). So what does that mean and what's the ideal specification?

Lumens are a unit of measurement that indicate how much light a source emits so its a measure of how bright a light is. Years ago, before all the low-energy type bulbs were around, lumens weren't mentioned - you just used watts as a guide to brightness. But nowadays, with all the different variety of bulbs, especially low-energy ones, a more standard measurement of brightness was required, so that you can compare one light source with another - so we now speak in lumens when referring to brightness.

So how many lumens do you need? Well it depends on the setting but in a studio the typical figure I've seen quoted is 60 - 80 lumens per square foot of floor space (maybe a bit more if you have a high ceiling). My small room is just over 8.5 ft x 10 ft so has a floor space of 85 square feet - that's 5,100 - 6,800 lumens in total. Wow! My room was so dark (apparently).

Okay, so what about the other measurement, Kelvin? Well this is the temperature of the light and an important factor when planning your lighting system. In a studio, the ideal lighting is natural daylight which measures at around 5,000 Kelvin. My halogen bulb was 3,000 K which would be labelled 'warm' and so my colours would tend to appear more red than they actually are.

So lumens and Kelvin are the two main properties to be on the lookout for, when planning your lighting system. There is one more measurement, if you really want to go the extra mile for 'gallery-standard' lighting and that is CRI or Colour Rendering Index. This is expressed as a percentage value and many bulbs will give you 80%, some will provide 90% and few will give 95% to 100%. Not many manufacturer's actually quote the CRI of their products - those which do are typically targeted towards colour-sensitive environments, have a higher price tag and are more difficult to source. I went to a local lighting specialist shop because I thought they would be clued up on this stuff and have a few products to choose from - the shop owner didn't have a clue about CRI!

I've read comments from artists concerned that they're not getting the full 100% CRI from the Solux bulbs they bought because the transformer in their light fitting isn't providing enough power. I reckon that's taking it a bit too far, especially as colour and value is also relative to the colour and value its next to on the canvas. That, and I'm sure the 5% difference is not going to make my paintings any better 🤣

Light fittings

Some artists advocate floor-standing light sources like those used by photographers - I reviewed a number of those and really like the Neewer range of products, but a big consideration was the floor space they would take up. You'd probably need two and that was just too much in my little room.

Others recommend those clip-on lights and they are pretty good - I've got one of those with a flexible-neck and two arm-like lights which have 4 settings of brightness. I've no idea what the lumens output is or what the light temperature is. The biggest problem I have when using them is that they need to be reasonably close to the painting to get decent light coverage and I end up banging my head on it when I'm not careful.

What I opted for

So I opted for a ceiling-mounted spotlight track system. The idea here was that it provided the following benefits:

• It was high enough to be out of the way, didn't take up any precious floor space and is high enough up so that the angle of the light minimised any glare on the painting. (35 degrees is apparently the optimum).
• You can simply clip in more lights if you need them.
• The lights have a 360 degree rotation and 180 degree swing so they can be directed anywhere you want. Two on the painting, from either side of my head, and one on the palette.

The supplier of the track light system was very helpful and gave excellent advice and service. I opted for a middle-feed, 2 meter track as the feed was coming from the old ceiling rose and I decided on four lights. They only supplied 'warm' or 'cool' white lights so I opted for the cool ones - so now I have 4 x 420 lumens (1680 lumens in total) at 4000K and I have to say my studio looks so much brighter and better than before.

I have seen that Philips are advertising a high output GU10 LED 6.2 W with 575 lumens, colour temperature of 6500K and a CRI of 90. I'll probably get those and keep the ones I have now as spares.