• I want to thank all the members that have upgraded your accounts. I truly appreciate your support of the site monetarily. Supporting the site keeps this site up and running as a lot of work daily goes on behind the scenes. Click to Support Signs101 ...

Shop Lighting

Letterbox Mike

Letterbox Mike

New Member
This has probably been discussed, I did a search but couldn't find a good answer to this...

We're putting new lights up in our printing and production areas. I want to put lamps in that are the closest to daylight, but I'm not sure which temperature is best. I'm hoping someone with first hand experience can chime in and tell me what has worked well for them in their shop.

I can buy lamps locally that are 5000k, 5200k, 5500k, 5600k, 6000k and 6500k, all of which fall into the "natural sunlight" spectrum. They all look fairly similar in the store display, to me 6500k looks obnoxiously blue, but i know the daylight spectrum extends up to 7500k so it could even be bluer. And I know daylight color temp changes throughout the day, but what would you recommend we go with as an overall best "average" so the colors we see printing/printed look fairly accurate to how they'll appear outside?

I'm assuming something in the 5500k-6000k range but I don't know, hence my hope someone has firsthand knowledge they can share.

Or is there a different/better source online somewhere other than our local lighting distributor that I'm not considering?

Thanks!
 
Colin

Colin

New Member
I recently replaced all of the lights in my shop. The old ballasts were magnetic type (noisy), and at first, while they did sell me "electronic" ballasts, they turned out to be ones that were going to obsolete this summer (T12). They also supplied me with 6500K bulbs which were also new, but an older style which matched the soon-to-be obsolete ballasts. They were also too bright. So I took the whole works back and got the brand new style of electronic ballasts (T8), and newer (smaller dia) daylight 5000K tubes.

All is good.
 
Last edited:
Custom_Grafx

Custom_Grafx

New Member
I'm not the resident colour guru, but from everything I have seen in the profiling process, D50 is the standard.

That doesn't mean it's correct, but it's the standard. If you're constantly making signs for an indoors venue which has a different spec light, you may want to make a profile for those conditions etc though.

One such occasion, was an install I recently did of some small panel signs. Nice neutral grey here, and outdoors... went onsite, and they had a noticeable magenta tint to them. Fortunately not a big deal as these were tiny 'notice' type signs, but my appreciation of the potential for trouble when it comes to greys was refreshed.

The i1, and I'm sure many other spectro's also show you what your 'ambient' lighting temperature is currently at, so that you can calibrate your monitor for those conditions and the such.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top