Low-temperature light is gaining attention in environments where delicate items are displayed. but what exactly is low-temp lighting and why is it so important?
Let’s take a look at showpieces in the art world. When a museum exhibits a Van Gogh or a Picasso, they want to protect that work as best they can.
Not just from thieves or visitors with a different view on art. Even if a masterpiece is left hanging on the wall, it could be at risk. Especially rapid changes in humidity or heat can have a negative impact.
Therefore, studies recommend that valuable works be handled with care. A well-sealed display box or an air-conditioned room can already help a lot.
What has also received more attention in recent years is the lighting of artworks. You can’t fully appreciate a beautiful work in the dark, but too much light can unnecessarily accelerate the aging process.
Light and heat can be detrimental to works of art or old manuscripts, causing brittle paper, discoloration, and eventually disintegration
Retail displays with food, beverages, cosmetics, or perfume, for example, are also at risk. Foods spoil faster in heat and lose their flavor or color when exposed to too much light. Even an expensive sneaker had better be safely displayed to minimize aging.
The solution to this? Low-temperature lights with limited lux output.
To showcase sensitive contents of presentation cabinets and displays in optimal condition, it is best to limit the light value to 50 lux and the temperature variation to less than 10°C.
But light produces heat, right?
That used to be a bigger problem than it is now. With the advent of highly efficient LED lights, much less energy is lost in heating for the same light output. This is a good thing for manuscripts in museums or libraries, for example. Yet it is best to avoid any unnecessary lux.
As a valued partner for museums worldwide, Vivalyte has a lot of experience in the selection and installation of low-lux lighting. We can set the LED lighting to 50 lux, the minimum illumination level required to perceive details with the naked eye. With our super-efficient led lights, we also keep the temperature variation compared to the ambient temperature safely below 10°C.
Besides that, LED light is a light source that does not contain the infrared and ultraviolet radiation that is harmful to art and the light levels are perfectly controllable. By using the right lenses and covers we also ensure that there is no disturbing glare.
In short: a pleasant experience for visitors in a safe environment for the precious items on display!
Discover the Vivaltye Low-Temperature series with a﹤10 °C temperature rise. Ideal for heat-sensitive places such as museums, retail displays, or cosmetics show cases.
The KBR, the Royal library of Belgium, is the national scientific library. Based in Brussels, they safeguard magnificent works from centuries of history, including the manuscripts of the Dukes of Burgundy. To safely exhibit their collection, the light is closely controlled:
(tip: you can visit the museum digitally)
Lux (symbol: lx) is the unit of illuminance, or the measure of how much luminance (total amount of visible light) is spread over an area. It is equal to one lumen per square metre. (Lux is not the same as Lumen. Lux is the amount of light that falls on a surface, where Lumen measures the total amount of light emitted by a light source, also called “luminous flux”)
1 lux is the illumination on a one square meter surface that is one meter away from a candle. The sun on the other end of the spectrum lights up the earth with a luminance of of up to 100.000 lux.
In addition to the temperature (in degrees Celsius) that light generates, the term light temperature can also refer to the color temperature of a light source (measured in Kelvins).
Though Kelvin heated carbon to see how the emitted light changed at different temperatures, LED lamps do not use heat to emit light. Therefore, they are measured by their correlated color temperature, which visually compares the emitted light from a lamp to the Kelvin chart.
At lower temperatures, light has a warmer hue. Low-temperature lamps emit hues from weak red to yellow. In the middle of the temperature range, light takes on a cooler hue. At high temperatures, light mimics daylight, with bright, bluish-white colors.
