Room lighting suggestions?

[Yavianice]

Are there any do’s and don’ts for using specific room lighting for layouts? Specifically, to avoid yellowing of track and trains. Are there specific types of bulbs that are recommended or should be avoided at all costs?

 

I’m also intending to put a UV filter on my window.

 

Thanks for the tips!

 

 

[Kiha66]

All the clubs I've see/joined just use normal overhead lighting, just try to close the blinds when you leave the room.  The sun especially fades scenery, but plastic and paint dont do well in sunlight either over a few years.  Otherwise I've never had much of an issue.

 

[kvp]

Any light that produces uv is bad. Standard lightbulbs make some, but the glass bulb filters out most of it. Halogen lights are very much like the sun, incuding the high uv content.

 

Classic light tubes have a coating that converts the uv into visible light. Compact ones are not as good in this. Both are bad for the eyes though.

 

Cold (bluish) led lights have some uv content, while warm led lights have a yellowish filter to convert this to visible light. The best are the led bulb lights that have an opaque white or yellowish white uv conversion cover, but they are expensive.

 

So i would say, that classic glass bulb incadescents, high frequency warm white full length light tubes and warm white leds are all good. Avoiding direct sunlight and halogens is a good idea.

 

My club uses light tubes only for cost reasons. The difference between the old 50Hz ones and the high frequency ones is also noticeable especially on videos as the latter isn't flickering. At home i use a single old 60 watts bulb and a 40 watts desk light (down from 5+1 bulbs, due to lack of maintenance and spare parts).

[cteno4]

Uv film is a must for window for long term. As kvp mentioned bulbs can produce varying amounts. Leds produce virtually none and have reached the price point that they will definitely play for themselves in the energy savings as well. Hardest thing in layout room lighting is spreading the light well for the layout. Long tubes (you can now get led tubes to replace fluorescent tubes, you just wire out the ballast to direct ad in most cases) will be better at making a more disperse light, where as spots will concentrate the light and leave light and dark areas. Led spots are even more intense point sources than incandescents. So it takes some fiddling to get the light right regardless of the kind of lights you use, diffusers can also help but they can get bulky, they will suck up some of the light, and you always need to consider ventilation.

 

also leds come in a range of temperatures and even though most will give you a temperature of the light t gauge how warm (red/brown) or cool (bluish) they don't always match up with each other between brands all that well. Also the brightness is variable in how they measure them with brightness (lumens) or by the power (watts). Some outright lie. So it takes trying different leds some to get the right feel for your use and eye. You can now get RGB leds that let you set the color temp you what. These are more expensive and many are ip based so you can control them from a smart phone (and let hackers take over your lighting).

 

lighting is important and it's also something that can be very personal in what feels right. It's worth experimenting on and getting it in before major layout work as it can be hard to work over the layout to install lights later and also nice to have good and final light when working on the layout.

 

jeff