Ad blocker detected: Our website is made possible by displaying online advertisements to our visitors. Please consider supporting us by disabling your ad blocker on our website.
I'm just in the process of fitting out my new shop and I'm unsure what's best to use for overhead lighting.
At the moment I have a single-point fitting with a long bar-type light with 5 GU10 bulbs. It's great for directing at the moulding displays etc, but casts so many shadow that it's difficult for customers to see colours accurately when trying mounts etc.
Does anyone have any suggestions? It's a fairly small shop with limited natural light due to a north-facing aspect.
Also, I'm building a large laying-up table for customers' pieces and thinking about some sort of separate lighting above this. Again, any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
I use daylight temperature florescent tubes so that customers are more likely to see the true colour - ie the same colour as taking it to the window. its surprising the difference it makes to the perceived colour of mountboard if you have either too white or too warn a light source.
Thanks for the replies so far, I'm sensing a slight divide in opinions. So what are the alternatives? As far as colour temp is concerned, is that less important than a natural flood with minimal shadows?
As an aside, B&Q have a special little lightbox arrangement so you can view paint colour samples under 3 different types of light to see the effect. It might be a nice idea to set something like this up - I think it could be done easily and cheaply and might avoid those customers that come back saying it looks completely different in their room.
Broad spectrum Fluorescent tubes. These are a bit more expensive, though still cheap at twice the price, and to the best of my knowledge these are better than daylight tubes as they throw a full spectrum of visible light similar to daylight at noon.
When I built my studio from scratch, my son in law electrician said the immortal words
You can't get enough light
With that in mind in installed 6 double day light fluorescent lights on three switches, then added another double to make seven doubles in total, in a studio 7M x3M x2.7 M in height, sure it's bright, but they can be switched off...
I ended up going for 2 x 6' tubes. By far the cheapest way to get a lot of light in the room. The reflectors on modern strip lights seem to be incredibly efficient at casting a smooth flat light - none of those harsh shadows you seem to get with LEDs.
We have high frequency units with daylight tubes in the workshop, and daylight bulbs in the printing area.
Really this is for consistency more than anything. Wherever I go with a piece of work in the workshop it's the same.
We had old strip lights in the previous workshop, each giving a slight difference in colour cast. Not only was it difficult for customer consultation but it often gave me headaches.
I would say just aim for bright and consistent. As has been previously mentioned, most people don't have daylight bulbs in their houses. I don't think so anyway.
