LED Light Fixtures for Art Studio Lighting

I have a 13' X 21' painting studio with a two story 12/12 pitch ceiling with two skylights on the 13 foot north end.

The dimensions are a great starting point and I appreciate you providing this data. I plugged in dimensions of 13 x 21 x 11 ft into the Lumen Estimation Calculator, which recommends a total of 22,600 lumens to meet the brightness needs of an art studio (approximately 80 footcandles).

​The target of 22,600 lumens should be our overall guiding target in terms of brightness, so this will be an important number to keep in mind!

​I need studio lighting.

The two crucial aspects of color quality when it comes to studio lighting are color temperature and color rendering. In terms of color temperature, daylight-calibrated color temperatures are best for art studios. We offer both 5000K and 6500K as color temperature options, and these values roughly correspond to noon-sun daylight and north-facing daylight, respectively. Additional information is available in our blog post below:

https://www.waveformlighting.com/art-painting/difference-between-5000k-and-6500k-bulbs

​In terms of color rendering, higher color rendering ensures accurate color representation. For painters, for example, this means that when you observe a particular paint color during the daytime, the same paint material appears the exact same during evening hours when viewed under a high CRI light source, but may appear different when viewed under a low CRI light source. This will obviously cause issues with color judgment and consistency.

​Track lighting is installed on two 13' overhead beams centered in the space at 11' up. I need overall work light. Do you recommend hanging shop lights above the beams (how many) or using linear light fixtures attached to the beams (how many). Would linear lights provide enough light?

Going back to our brightness target of 22,600 lumens, we can back-calculate the following:

​Shop Light Fixtures @ 4200 lumens each = 6 fixtures

T5 Linear Light Fixtures (4-ft) @ 1800 lumens each = 13 fixtures

​According to these calculations, either of these options will provide sufficient light across your space. You could, of course, even do a little bit of mixing and matching with fixture type and installation location to increase the amount of brightness in certain areas of your studios where it is most needed.

​I have an electrical box in the ceiling on both side above the track beam. These aren't dimmable so I don't want to be blasted out either. What do you recommend? 

Unfortunately you are correct in pointing out that these fixtures are not dimmable. The best alternative solution we can suggest here would be to connect the fixtures on separate light switch circuits so that you can manually choose between full and partial brightness. (This may be especially useful since you may have sufficient daylight coming in during the daytime from your skylight).

Question posted under:

Art studio lightingT5 linear fixturesLED shop lights

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