Studio Lighting

Whatever your studio situation, it helps to work under a good volume of color-balanced light, and there are many ways to set it up.

Regular incandescent lights peak the orange and red wavelengths, and tends to be weak on blue. That’s why red colors in your picture look so good—and blue colors look so dead—under normal incandescent light. Some artists prefer to work under an array of halogen or blue-tinted incandescent bulbs, which can give excellent light, and which simulate the track lights used in galleries and museums. The downside of incandescent is that it uses a lot of electricity.

Standard “warm white” and “cool white” fluorescent lights overemphasize yellow-green. They’re made to give the most light in the range of wavelengths that the human eye is most sensitive to. If you’re using flourescent light, try to select "color-balanced" or "full spectrum" bulbs (such as Vita-Lite or Verilux brands) with as high a “CRI Index” as possible. The color rendering index is a measure of how well artificial light simulates the full range of wavelengths in natural sunlight. The quality of light that a fluorescent light delivers depends on phosphors that the manufacture uses to line the tube.

A measure of this color output is the graph of “spectral power distribution,” which any specialty lighting salesperson should be able to show you for a light you’re considering. It’s not as technical as it sounds, once you start comparing these charts.

The simplest solution, popular with art students, is a “Luxo” type lamp that combines fluorescent and incandescent light.

In my studio now, I have a north window to my left (because I’m righthanded). In the daytime, I turn off the fluorescent lights and use the natural daylight. North light is the traditional artist’s studio lighting, but I find it to be a little too cool and variable on its own. (By the way, note the mirror to the left of the curved window, for getting a fresh eye.)

Some artists in the past used sunlight from a south-facing window diffused through white cloth. This is a great solution, because it’s free and abundant. The best cloth I’ve found is white ripstop nylon from the fabric store. The window should be blocked off on the lower half so that the glare doesn’t go into your eyes while you're working.

This inspired me to diffuse the light from an overhead skylight as a supplement to north light. Directly above the work area is a four-foot skylight opening. The opening channels the light from two skylights, one on each side of the roofpeak. The skylight well is lined with Mylar-coated card stock that I found at a craft store. This reflective lining bounces and multiplies the sunlight that finds its way into the skylight well. The direct sunlight is diffused into a white nylon panel held in place with a homemade square frame of PVC tubing.

Flanking the skylight are fluorescent fixtures with 12 four-foot color-balanced bulbs.
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Wikipedia on Spectral Power Distribution, and Color Rendering Index
Color output chart courtesy Salsburg.com.
Incandescent chart from Neon.com