Another EYE to EYE Perspective
Andrea Fortunoff
Director of Store Design
White Plains, New York.
Being in the retail design industry, I am constantly faced with challenging projects that quite frequently involve selecting the best possible lighting for applications in specialized settings. One of the more difficult challenges is finding proper
lighting for jewelry.
The presentation of a radiant diamond on attractive, healthy looking skin is often the determining factor for making the choice "to buy" or "not to buy". The perception of how the diamond looks, whether mounted in the ring on a finger, draped around the neck or set in an earring against a backdrop of soft hair and smooth skin can ultimately be the persuasive factor.
I was introduced to EYE Lighting’s Color Arc lamps during Lightfair in the late nineties. After working with various lamp manufacturers and sampling what they had to offer, I decided that EYE Lighting/Iwasaki was the best.
Metal Halide is my lamp technology of choice for retail lighting applications in general, but specifically for illuminating diamonds; they do a wonderful job of bringing out the sparkle in a diamond and are very efficient light sources. Incandescent lamps have a very high Color Rendering Index but the light tends to be too yellow for presenting diamonds. Halogen lamps can also be a problem because along with a short lamp life, they throw off a lot of heat and their power consumption is high when
compared with Metal Halide.
Typically, all standard Metal Halide lamps contain rare-earth compounds. If those same rare earths are also present in a diamond, it causes the diamond to fluoresce. This is undesirable as it changes the appearance of the diamond. Fluorescing does not occur in diamonds under natural sunlight, and I discovered that diamonds do not fluoresce under EYE Color Arc lamps, whose light is a close presenting diamonds. Halogen lamps can also be a problem because along with a short lamp life, they throw off a lot of heat and their power consumption is high when compared with Metal Halide.
After experimenting with all of the available Metal Halide lamps, I found that diamonds looked best under Color Arc lamps, manufactured by EYE Lighting/Iwasaki. As mentioned earlier, although important for catching the eye of a discerning buyer, the final purchasing decision is not usually based on how the diamond appears in the display case. A diamond must look great on bare skin. For this reason, the color temperature of the light is very important when choosing a lamp. Skin tones look great under 3500K light, but diamonds look better under higher color temperatures which can wash out flesh tones. I found that using the EYE Color Arc 4500K lamp was the best choice because skin tones are pleasing and the diamonds still sparkle.
The original Color Arc lamp design was a tubular bulb operating in a base-up position that required an expensive custom designed fixture with a lens. Originally, the Color Arc lamp was not compatible with North American Ballasts, this issue caused
color variation from lamp to lamp. Eventually an electronic ballast was designed and the color variability problem was solved.
This original lamp only worked in recessed fixtures. As a retailer I needed the flexibility of using a track fixture so I persistently
requested that the engineers at EYE Lighting design a Color Arc lamp in a PAR bulb with a lens. Using a track mount would also lower the fixture cost as the lens would be part of the lamp and not in the fixture. It took nearly two years for EYE to design and test the new low profile PAR 36 Color Arc lamp, and I’m simply delighted with the end-result.
Another costly issue was that ultraviolet light produced by Metal Halide lamps causes fading of the expensive props and fabric
used in the jewelry showcases. EYE engineers solved this problem with the application of a special UV block coating inside the new PAR 36 lamp.
We installed 150-watt EYE Color Arc lamps in the ceiling, 13 feet above the high-end jewelry case display in our newly constructed Fortunoff department store in White Plains, New York. The lamps are spaced 2 feet apart in a linear array to match the layout of the jewelry cases below. Our goal was to achieve an even distribution of light all along the display cases with some light-spill in the aisles. Ambient lighting in the area is also supported by PAR Halogen. The overall effect is a brilliant display of light that draws the customer’s attention and interest to the jewelry case. It is further stimulated by the appearance of the diamond against rich skin tones.
Like snowflakes, no two diamonds are alike; their individual fire and beautifully sparkling facets are maximized through the
medium of brilliant, full-spectrum light, and I have chosen EYE Color Arc lamps to provide that light.
For your EYE TO EYE solution, call EYE Lighting today.
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