Studio Lighting Temperature

[jknecht]

Which is better - "daylight" lamps which do a better job of showing "true color", or "soft white" which is how the painting is most likely to be seen in someone's home?

Also, should I match the light temperature used to light my subject with the light temperature used on my easel?

[Aires]

Personally, I want to duplicate as nearly as possible natural light, especially for color mixing. I am most satisfied when I can come up with a situation where my palette of color mixes appears the same inside or out. It takes some doing for me since I don't have outside windows in my basement studio but it is possible to come up with a near replication of natural light with color corrected bulbs (both regular and flourescent) and even a mixture of light sources. I feel I've reached an acceptable situation when I can take my panting outside and see little to no difference.

[Adriantmax]

I usually look for about 5300k. below 5000 gets a bit yellow over 5500k starts to go more blue.

In the end though, what your painting looks like in peoples homes depends on their own lighting which rarely takes the artwork into account. Though for us, we want to be able to see our colors and mix them accurately a lot of the people viewing the pieces aren't that picky.