A new method in object lighting : using surface chromaticity coordinates as a led-based lighting tool in museums

In contemporary museum lighting, the common practice is to choose light sources with recommended Color Rendering Indices (CRI) and Color Temperatures (CT) that do not emit harmful wavelengths: ultraviolet and infrared. In addition to CRI and CT, the commonly disregarded component of each light source, the Chromaticity Coordinates (CC), do not exist in any guidelines that are intended to be used by museum lighting designers and curators. This thesis aims to create a guideline for the museum lighting designers by proposing a new lighting method based on the relation between the surface CC of the museum objects and the CC of the light sources that are proposed to be their illuminators. For this reason, an experiment was conducted by using the Light-Emitting Diodes (LEDs) and computerized lighting controlled systems to test the validity of the proposed method. In the study, the appearances of the colored objects under a D65 reference light source were evaluated by comparing the created light source with their CC values and three other LED light sources with CT of 3000, 4200, and 6500 Kelvin that are mainly used in the museum lighting design applications. The results of the experiment showed that subjects preferred the appearance of the objects under lights that have same CC as the object. This thesis contributes to the museum lighting literature by creating the basis for a guideline for choosing and creating unique light sources for objects, by using their own physical properties.