Appearance of Achromatic Colors Under Optimized Light Source Spectrum

Light source spectrum can be optimized for object reflectance to reduce the energy consumption by reducing the amount of light absorbed by surfaces. While the feasibility of this approach to architectural lighting has been demonstrated, this concept has only been tested with objects of highly saturated colors. Here, the color appearance of 24 Macbeth ColorChecker test samples, which includes achromatic surfaces (i.e., gray, black, and white), illuminated by optimized theoretical test spectra and reference light sources (incandescent, equal-energy radiator, and phosphor-coated white LED) were calculated using a color space based on the International Commission on Illumination's (CIE) color appearance model, CIECAM02-UCS. Results show that energy consumption could be reduced to between 39% and 90%, with small shifts in color appearance, when considering all object colors. When lighting is optimized for achromatic test samples, energy consumption and light absorption were reduced more than when optimized for colorful surfaces, with imperceptible shifts in color appearance.