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Lighting requirements for art galleries and museums

Visiting a museum or gallery is essentially a visual experience. Visitors rely on light to see the exhibits, so the skills of the lighting designer are needed to establish and maintain a bridge between visitors and the objects being visited. It is an important factor that the light must not damage the exhibits, which makes lighting design more difficult. Most exhibits in museums and galleries will be affected by light in one way or another, whether it is natural light or artificial lighting.

There have been considerable changes in recent years in the form of exhibitions and the way in which the collection of exhibits is presented. It must eventually be admitted that the Victorian exhibition method of bringing together a large variety of items in one hall is no longer recognized as the best method for modern exhibitions. Therefore, the display of exhibits is increasingly focused on characteristic exhibitions, and of course the lighting must also match this trend. It is necessary to consider the unique requirements of individual exhibits, while also paying attention to the comfort and visual sense of visitors.

The interior of any museum presents a continuous and static visual picture to the visitor, so the lighting designer must consider this continuous vision as the most important factor. Visitors start their visit from the main entrance, so proper lighting control should be implemented there, not just for the display of artworks. Visitors should be given a certain amount of time and appropriate lighting conditions to pass through the entire exhibition area from the entrance, so that visitors can adapt to the different exhibition lights set for different exhibitions from beginning to end.

In order to achieve a perfect visual effect for the exhibits, it is necessary to pay attention to the coordination of the exhibition lights and their background lights. As long as the light control conditions are good, even a lower illumination level can achieve satisfactory results, especially for some exhibits that are prone to deterioration under the action of light, a lower illumination level is required. Not all exhibits are light-sensitive, and some things require stronger dramatic lighting to show their characteristics, such as machines and sculptures. The strong light exhibition area cannot be placed in front of the relatively weak light exhibition area, which will easily make the weakly lit exhibits appear dimmer.

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