How Lighting Can Accentuate Your Art

Lighting art work extenuates and manipulates the colour and textural dimension throughout the art. By projecting light over a beautiful piece of art, particularly in a dark room you draw attention and drama onto the art work highlighting its colours and beauty.

There are many different lighting methods you can utilise to illuminate your art. The most common methods are ceiling mounted lighting or track lighting. Ceiling mounted lighting is great to highlight one specific piece, while track lighting allows you to highlight many pieces. The benefit of track lighting is its flexibility allowing you to highlight floor to ceiling art, as well as individual or multiple pieces of art.

Different lighting can either extenuate or damage your art however, so it’s important to be educated when making technical decisions. You can purchase LED lights, Incandescent, Halogen and Florescent lights, this is what you need to know about them.

LED Lightings does not create heat damage or emit ultraviolet rays or infrared lights.

Incandescent Lights highlight yellow and red tones, while flattering shades blue and green.

Halogen Lights Provide a pure white light, able to extenuate the majority of art. Halogenic lights do create a lot heat and must be placed far enough from the art to create heat damage.

Florescent Lights emit ultraviolet rays, distorting and damaging the colour of the art work. Fluorescent lights are not recommended when to light your art work.

Pro tip, to reduce glare mount the light at a 30-degree angle to the art, to minimise glare and avoid casting shadows. To avoid heat damage use LED Lights and distance the lights far enough from the art so that the heat projected from the bulb has dissipated, you can test this by holding your hand in front of the bulb for a short period of time. Discolouration and cracking can occur due to heat exposure so be cautious when lighting valuable pieces of art work.

Lighting art work can be beneficial when showcasing your artwork. Colours can be extenuated and manipulated so it’s important to take into consideration what lights are best to use for your environment and desired outcome. Heat damages artwork so be conscious in distancing the light far enough, to not crack or discolour your piece. Illuminating art adds depth and vibrancy, it is the final step to really showcase your arts true beauty.