studio lighting

By July 1 I'll be moving into a new studio space within the Columbia Pike Artist Studios in Arlington. I've been there one year--time flies--and quickly outgrew my 170 square foot studio. My space is about double in size. Unfortunately, my new space is an interior space without windows or natural light. To light the space I'll replace the current fluorescent and incandescent bulbs with full-spectrum tubes and CFLs (compact fluorescent bulbs).

At this point, I think I know more about lighting than I ever thought I would or cared to know. However, it is all very interesting. The way I understand it is: the color temperature of light is measured in kelvins (K). The thing to remember is a lower number equals warmer (yellow) light and a higher number equals cooler (blue) light. Sunlight at noon on a clear day is approximately 6500K and a standard incandescent bulbs measures around 3000K. Full spectrum lighting measures at 5000K and higher. So if that isn't enough to think about, we need to talk about the color rendering index (CRI), which a rating that measures the rendering ability of light on a scale of 1 to 100. Sunlight at noon measures 100.

The lighting I plan to use in my studio measure in at 5900K and 94 CRI. These are the closest to natural light that I can find. They're not cheap to purchase but the savings for switching to CFLs should be reflected on my electric bills. According to an online CFL savings calculator my electricity costs will be reduced by more than $20 per month saving more more than $2,000 over the life of the bulbs. Check it out, http://www.e3living.com/cfl-savings-calculator.