What is 'good' lighting?
Light is at the centre of everything we see, we simply can’t see in the dark. But lighting isn’t as simple as flicking the switch on or off and good lighting is crucial to our vision. So what makes lighting good? A couple of things are really important, we want a high quality, directable, bright light with an excellent colour rendering index, which is how closely an artificial light recreates daylight. A CRI of 100 indicating colours look exactly as they do in natural lighting.
.
.
We also want the light to be adjustable to suit the environment and task, and have an appropriate or variable colour temperature. If you are reading a book late at night a warm bright light will be comfortable while reducing eye strain. If you are painting on a nice weekend then a bright daylight light will reproduce colours faithfully and make it easy to see your painting clearly.
.
.
Magnification is important but without lighting we cannot utilise our vision and keep our eyes healthy. Lighting is one of the simplest and most effective ways of improving the way we see things. Stay tuned for our next blog post on task lighting!
.
