Light & Engineering Vol. 24, No. 1, pp. 36-40, 2016 Svetotekhnika No. 3, 2016 A STUDY OF THE SUITABILITY OF LED LIGHT SOURCES OVER CONVENTIONAL LIGHT SOURCES IN A MUSEUM ENVIRONMENT Amrita Bhattcharjee and Saswati Mazumdar Illumination Engineering Section, Electrical Engineering Department Jadavpur University, Kolkata E-mails: bhattacharjee.amrita1@gmail.com; saswati.mazumdar@gmail.com ABSTRACT The core of the museum is the exhibition. <...> Effective exhibit lighting can be achieved by providing standard light levels as well as lowering the IR and UV components at the same time to minimise running energy costs. <...> These requirements can be efficiently fulfilled with comparatively low power consuming light-emitting diode (LED) lamps. <...> LED lamps offer a long service life and high efficacy (lumen/Watt). <...> LEDs are available in different colours, have lower Ultraviolet (UV) and Infra-Red (IR) content and provide better Colour Rendering Index (CRI), which is good for museum displays. <...> Lighting design in museums requires a sensitive and flexible approach to providing optimum display conditions for museum exhibits. <...> The energy conserving lighting design methodology based on LED will help to secure a green future by enlightening the past perfectly. <...> Keywords: SPD, LPD, illuminance, UV, photosensitive INTRODUCTION A museum’s primary responsibility is the study and care of its collections and the effective public display of those collections. <...> Thus, lighting has been considered to be the second most important responsibility of the exhibition designer. <...> So, the purpose of this study is to clarify the suitability of different 36 light sources to the museum environment. <...> VISIBILITY AND ILLUMINANCE LEVELS The illuminance level of a museum should be carefully controlled in such a way so that no damage occurs to artworks by optical radiation. <...> According to IESNA [1], the maximum illuminance level on highly susceptible materials is 50 lx. <...> Now, from the experimental result that was carried out on Japanese Paintings (mosaic colour samples of Red, Yellow, Green, Blue natural mineral pigments and Gold leaf) it was found that the subjective feeling under LEDRGB at 10 lx is almost same as with white fluorescent lamp <...>