With the rapid move towards LED technology, there are now new features that this digital device can provide beyond just energy savings.
Halogen lamps and metal halide lamps are typical retail product lighting, giving a colour of light (CCT) that also imitates colour very similar to daylight. The common metric for evaluating how well colours are rendered by a particular light source is the Colour Rendering Index (CRI). To test colour rendering using CRI, a number of swatches of different standard colours are used and scored up to 100. This information is summarised as ”Ra”, the rendering average, although it is only the average of the first 8 swatches of pastel shades. These lamps perform well and are the benchmark for new energy efficient technology. From this a very high CRI value can be achieved even if scores are poor for the more saturated colours and skin tones.
The same technology can deliver colours to create specific moods or to increase sales in retail, i.e. warm pink for raw meat. Using specific colours to increase the sales of certain products may already exist but the flexibility of using a single light source which can change colour accordingly is brand new.
