Lighting art at home is about make the piece look great right now and keeping it looking great over time. You can accomplish both by learning just a few general rules, without using any museum hardware. Here are three tips that cover almost every residential art lighting setup.

Tip 1: Use beam angles to avoid glare and reveal form

For 2D art (paintings, photos, prints): start with the classic 30-degree aiming rule. Use adjustable gimbal lights like the ones from NuWatt to set the beam angle at around 30 degrees from vertical. This usually keeps reflections out of normal sightlines. If the work is glossy or behind glass, raise the angle a bit or shift the fixture sideways until glare disappears from where you stand.

For 3D art (sculpture, ceramics, textured objects): Use a key light from one side to create shape, and a softer fill light from another angle to tame shadows. If the object blends into the background, add a subtle back or rim light. Walk the piece as you aim; the “right” setup is the one that looks good from the regular everyday angles.

Beam spread matters as much as angle. Larger artworks need a high beam spread, or more commonly two carefully overlapping beams that preserve even vertical illumination. Fine-tune with barn doors, snoots, or honeycomb louvers if spill is catching your eye.

Tip 2: Pick sensible light intensity (lux), then control exposure

Museums of the past used to cover their artworks to protect against UV radiation from light. Modern LEDs emit very little UV, but photons from light can still fade colors over time – and the more intense the light, the more potential for damage. To preserve your artworks, use just enough brightness (measured in lux) to illuminate without oversaturation. Conservation guidelines are a useful starting point even for normal collections: very sensitive works on paper (prints, photos, watercolors, textiles) are often illuminated with around 50 lux, while oil/acrylic paintings, wood, and most mixed media tolerate more like 150–200 lux. Stone, glass, and metal can go higher. You can certainly exceed these in a home for visual impact but think in terms of “as much as needed,” instead of “as much as possible.”

You can get lux by diving the lumens by the surface area.

lux ≈ lumens hitting the art ÷ area.

Example: if about 300 lumens reach a 0.5 m² canvas, you are around 600 lux. This is a rough estimate, since the fixture lens and beam spread, and the reflectivity of the artwork itself influence the final lux level. For a precise reading you can use a phone lux-meter app. Keep in mind that light exposure is cumulative, and the brighter the light the less time it can take to cause damage. Dimmers, timers, and simply switching art lights off when not in use reduce fading more than splitting hairs about a number.

Tip 3: Prioritize TM-30 over CRI

CRI is a helpful baseline, but it is only a single average score based on eight pastel-ish test colors. An LED can post a high CRI while still rendering saturated colors wrong. TM-30 is the newer upgrade to CRI that uses 99 real-world color samples and modern color science for a more precise scale. TM-30 reports Rf, a fidelity score showing how accurately colors match a daylight-like reference, and Rg, a gamut score showing whether colors look more vivid or more muted than that reference.

This is why full spectrum LEDs matter for art. They have a smoother, more continuous SPD, which typically yields higher Rf and a more balanced Rg. For residential art lighting, aim for CRI 95+ as a practical floor, and confirm strong Rf / near-neutral Rg when a brand provides TM-30 data. The same SPD data that factories provide for CRI can also be used to calculate Rf and Rg, so look for brands that can provide that data.

In summary, remember these three tips: set brightness to just what the art piece needs, aim beams to illuminate without glare, and choose LEDs with daylight-like spectrum. Those three habits will make a normal home collection looking new for decades.