Art & Studio

SEE

COLORS

ACCURATELY

NorthLux™ by Waveform Lighting

Color perception matters

When working with paints, inks, fabrics and virtually any medium with varied or subtle color, accurate color perception is absolutely critical. Because our perception of color is based on reflected light, changes in the light source can drastically affect our color perception.

You may have experienced this yourself. After hours of hard work under a "daylight" lamp, you take your masterpiece out into natural light - and find that the colors don't look anything like what you expected.

You think your eyes must be lying to you!

It's Not You, It's the Light

Artifical lamps - even the ones marketed as "daylight balanced" or "full spectrum" - lack the spectral wavelengths necessary for accurate color perception. A light's Color Rendering Index (CRI) is often used to judge the similarity of color appearance, and indeed, most artifical lamps with daylight color temperatures average around 80 CRI (natural daylight scores, by definition, 100 CRI).

With the latest advances in LED and LED phosphor technology, we've engineered a bulb with 95 CRI and R9 > 90.

The result?

NorthLux™ light bulbs capture the spectral and color properties of light coming through north-facing window. No matter what time of day or season, simply install one of our NorthLux™ light bulbs, and rest assured that your colors will appear the same as under north-facing natural light, day in and day out.

It's Not You, It's the Light

With the latest advances in LED and LED phosphor technology, we've engineered a bulb with 95 CRI and R9 > 90.

The result?

★★★★★

"I’ve been struggling with light in my studio for years. My instructor did a tutorial on lighting and Waveform had exactly what she described! This light has been fantastic and has made a huge difference in my studio! Highly recommend!"

The Science Behind the Art

True Full Spectrum Light

First and foremost, we are lighting geeks at Waveform Lighting. We obsess over the "peaks" and "valleys" of the daylight spectrum, and engineer our LED lamps to approximate this as closely as possible.

Why do we do this? The spectral composition of a light source is like its DNA - color temperature, CRI, TM-30-15 - all color metrics are determined and calculated from the spectral distribution.

Simply put, it's the most direct and reliable method of determining the quality of a light source.

6500K and High CRI

You've probably heard recommendations to use daylight CCT bulbs for artwork. Unfortunately, CRI is oftentimes left out of the equation, and without sufficient rendering ability, the result is a light source that appears white like daylight, but colors that don't appear the same as under natural daylight.

NorthLux™ products feature 95 CRI and 6500K. The 6500K CCT indicates that the color of the light itself is the same as natural daylight, and 95 CRI indicates that objects illuminated by this lamp also appear the same as they would under natural daylight.

RedBoost™ for Improved Red Color Rendering

One of the most difficult colors to reproduce under artificial lighting is red. This is due to the fact that humans are most sensitive to green and yellow light, but not so much to red light. So, most manufacturers will capitalize on this by minimizing the amount of energy in the red portion of the spectrum, so that they can increase the amount of perceived brightness.

NorthLux™ products feature Waveform Lighting's RedBoost™ technology, which incorporates long-wavelength red phosphor material that ensures that sufficient amounts of red energy are present in the spectrum.

★★★★★

"I am an artist whose media is oil on canvas. I bought this bulb for my studio to enable me to see my colors (both on palette and canvas) accurately. I am extremely happy with the results. "