As if customers of
Ryness Lighting and Electrical (http://www.ryness.co.uk/)
needed any more evidence of the advantages of LED light bulbs, an art museum in the American state of Indiana has been
discovering just how much it can save by switching to such a lighting system.
To be more precise,
it is the Indiana University Art Museum’s Special Exhibitions Gallery in
Bloomington that has been introducing the LED
lighting for an amazing show of original oil paintings by the institution’s
emeritus art professor Barry Gealt. However, the museum also continues to
exhibit many other pieces, lit by more traditional incandescent bulbs.
The difference
between the old-style electric lighting and the more recently developed
alternative is clear to see, with the paintings being illuminated by cooler and
cleaner white lights, while the other exhibits are bathed in a warm, yellowish
glow. “It’s like apricot soup”, commented IU theatre professor Rob Shakespeare
of the incandescent lamps.
The new lightbulbs also differ greatly from their
older equivalents in the value that they offer once installed, with the museum
finding them to only require a fraction of the electricity of incandescent
bulbs in order to provide an equal amount of light. According to Shakespeare,
12 to 15 watts are used by each of the gallery’s 60 or so LED lamps, compared
to the incandescent bulbs that they replaced using 90 to 100 watts each.
Shakespeare added
that with 70 or 80 per cent of the energy that was used by incandescent light
bulbs being lost as unwanted heat – compared to LED lamps producing only light
– the newer solution would also lessen the gallery’s use of energy for air
conditioning. Another real benefit of LED lighting from a time and financial
perspective is its longer projected lifespan of 50,000 hours, with incandescent
bulbs only mustering up to 2,000 hours in comparison.
That means that
museum personnel can spend less time constantly changing light bulbs, and more time devising
engaging exhibitions – as well as, of course, making sure that the art
treasures that it shows remain in the best possible condition. Here, too, the
up-to-date LED light bulbs offer real advantages, as they produce a balanced
spectrum of light that replicates natural light.
This removes the
infrared rays produced by incandescent bulbs that can actually bake art, said
Shakespeare, with the ultraviolet rays of the opposite end of the light
spectrum destroying organic pigments. Instead of the “big spike in the spectral
curve” of more traditional electric lighting that is responsible for paintings
and prints fading unevenly, the LED lights are gentler on the art, causing
colours to fade more evenly and slowly.
But of course, both
for the gallery in Indiana and the average British homeowner, there are still a
few disadvantages of energy saving light
bulbs, such as their higher unit cost. That’s why Ryness Lighting and Electrical
(http://www.ryness.co.uk) strives to
provide its own customers with the widest possible range of both types of
bulbs, even amid the restrictions of recent EU legislation.
No comments:
Post a Comment