One of the most important – and most overlooked – aspects of a quality custom spray booth is the lighting. The right lighting is extremely important in order to achieve a quality paint job for your customers and clients. When you think about the lighting in your custom spray booth, there are many factors that you must consider which include the type of light bulb you use, the quality of the light fixtures, and the location of your fixtures.
Leave Design to the Professionals
One of the biggest mistakes industry professionals make is to think that they can design their own lighting in their spray booth. This is a huge mistake and one that should most definitely be avoided if at all possible. Custom spray booth builders know all of the ins and outs of spray booth lighting, so you should leave design decisions up to the professionals.
Pick the Right Tubes
When we talk about lighting in spray booths, we refer to “light tubes.” For many years, the T12 light tube was the best in the business. However, in recent years, the T12 has fallen out of favor (it is actually no longer in production) and has been replaced by the T8 light tube. T8 light tubes are more energy efficient and cost effective than older light tubes. If you are not yet using the T8 light tubes, you should meet with a professional spray booth designer to talk about overhauling your light tube system.
It Is All About Color
If you work in a spray booth, you already know that color matching and color quality are among the most important factors that you must keep in mind. In ideal conditions, your spray booth lighting would be exactly the same as the lighting outside. Since that cannot actually happen, we have two recommendations to help your lighting be as ideal as possible.
First, you should always use color-corrected light tubes. Color-corrected light tubes will allow the lighting conditions in your spray booth to be as close to the lighting outside as possible. (This is particularly important when you are in the process of matching colors for your client.)
Second, you should use lamps that are as highly rated on the color rendering index (CRI) as possible. The CRI is a scale that runs from 0-100 and measures how “true” the color of light is. If you are using low CRI lamps, you will not be using the best lamps for your spray booth.
Final Thoughts
Of course, the above advice is just the beginning when it comes to the lighting in your spray booth. Because there are so many factors to consider when you think about the lighting in your spray booth, we strongly recommend that you consult with a professional. A custom spray booth designer will be able to advise you on all the small details and factors like the brightness of your spray booth as well as the type of glass you should use to maximize your efficiency and cost effectiveness.