White lights in a Darkroom?

My viewing light is a 40w tungsten bulb in a recessed ceiling fixture (with a textured diffusion glass). When viewing, I take the print out of the fix, corner drain for a second or two, then place it on a piece of plexiglass, angled about 60˚ to me, at the back of the sink, against the wall, so when I stand about 3 - 4ft from the print at the other side of the sink, I am looking at the print at about 90˚ to the print surface, with no other lights on in the room, except the safe lights, which are too dim to effect the view. The viewing light is about 4 ft from the print, as the ceiling is low there. I move closer if I want to see closer, but the light doesn't change.
When I built the darkroom, I knew I would want this, so that one light is on its own wall switch, near that end of the sink.
The fix runs off fairly quickly, and the wet shiny print is what I see. I have found over time that this combination is perfect to compensate for dry down. Almost always Ilford Multigrade warm tone glossy.

First of all, darkrooms should be truly and literally dark when the lights are off. For certain materials, the right kind of safelight can be used. But once the light are back on, it helps to have color correct lighting available not only for reviewing initial color print results, but also for achieving the precise desired tone of a black and white print. But this should not be messed up by bouncing off some off-color wall, any more than you'd want to take a color portrait using flash bounced off a colored wall.

I've pretty much standardized on equalized 5000K for my darkroom viewing area, my crucial review and retouching station, my drymount and framing area, and my mock gallery display wall. And I've gotten absolutely fed up with these recent eye-straining, lasting only a 20th as long as they're rated, phony-labeled per CRI, junk CFL and LED bulbs sold everywhere these days. So I ordered some true architectural quality full spectrum 5000K LED track light bulbs from Waveform Lighting. Sure, they cost about $30 per bulb; but I figure, given their conspicuously better build quality, they'll end up cheaper in the long run than the usual suspects. Plus no more eyestrain, and much more consistent color. Only the 5000K / CRI 98 pro color matching bulbs at my retouching station are better.

A lot of good points and ideas expressed here.

Thanks!

I have a bank of 4 foot high output fluorescent fixtures for general illumination, and typically when I view prints I'll do it in daylight when I can. Even for B&W printing, the amount of light makes a big difference, I find my darkroom is too bright for evaluating in most viewing situations. If I print to viewing under the florescents, then the print is often too dark when viewed under typical household lighting.

Paint your darkroom yellow, it will be just as "dark" when using safelights and yellow paint will not reflect "actinic" light and will be much more cheerful when the white lights are on.

darkroommike said:

Paint your darkroom yellow, it will be just as "dark" when using safelights and yellow paint will not reflect "actinic" light and will be much more cheerful when the white lights are on.

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...then everything will look yellowish when you have the white lights on. Evaluating color prints, especially, with lots of reflected color from the walls makes for off-color prints. With lots of yellow being reflected from the walls, you'll automatically make prints that are too blue to compensate.

For black-and-white prints, the situation would be similar, if less critical, affecting toning and even print density.

I like neutral white walls in the darkroom. Mine are painted with eggshell-sheen white base paint; still matte enough not to reflect a lot of light, but easy to clean, and real bright, neutral white. No warm white for me!

Making sure my darkroom is really dark and that your enlargers are well baffled to prevent leaks allows me to bounce safelights off any surface, and then turn on the white light and evaluate my prints in the same environment.

For evaluating color prints, the industry "standard" seems to be daylight, around 5000K. For evaluating black-and-white prints, however, I prefer a mix of warm tungsten and daylight floods, which I think better approximates the real-life display lighting in homes and galleries (although a lot of galleries are now using those glaringly-blue LEDs - OUCH! - the warm ones are better, but...).

Yellow around the enlarger to help eliminate actinic light from leaks, etc. might be a good idea, but for walls in a print evaluating situation, I think it's asking for trouble.

Best,

Doremus

Dittio I greatly prefer white walls in the darkroom as oxymoronic as it sounds.

White walls in my darkroom. I originally intended to paint the wall behind the enlarger flat black, never got around to it. For critical evaluation of my prints, I use a graphic arts viewing booth that has medium light gray surfaces (lighter than a standard gray card).

Doremus Scudder said:

For evaluating color prints, the industry "standard" seems to be daylight, around 5000K.

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Daylight is actually on a much large range, generally 5-6.5K, but can vary even more (the actual daylight we experience out in the open), all depending on time of day, time of year, cloud coverage and viewers physical location (in shade will further change daylight color temperature reaching that spot).

It does seem than anything between 5-6.5K will do for internal use and print examination. One needs to keep in mind, that unless display of that print has highly controlled lighting, it oculd be a total crap shoot to look at a print under 5-6.5K and then be quite surprised it ain't looking same on a wall.

I believe the reason that 5000K (or a bit more) lighting is standard for color print evaluation is not only that it approximates daylight, but it is assumed that our eyes and psyches are comfortable with adjusting/compensating for the lower color temperature of artificial lighting so that a print that looks good at 5000K will also look fine when displayed under tungsten lighting, anywhere from 2700K - 3400K. Our eyes "white balance" for us down to a certain point.

The color temperature of shadows lit by blue sky can be quite high, since it's only the scattered, mostly blue, light that illuminates there. We should be careful not to evaluate our prints in the shade

Doremus

Unfortunately, lighting in homes, galleries, and even outside is subject to so many variables, there is no predicting what a print will look like unless you are printing for a specific location and viewing environment. That is why the offset printing industry, at least in the US, has set standards for viewing that while not ideal under all circumstances, is something that all printers (offset) can work towards. Better than scattershot and hoping it works out, looks-good-at-my-desk-in-the-corner-near-a-window type of thing.

Doremus Scudder said:

I believe the reason that 5000K (or a bit more) lighting is standard for color print evaluation is not only that it approximates daylight, but it is assumed that our eyes and psyches are comfortable with adjusting/compensating for the lower color temperature of artificial lighting so that a print that looks good at 5000K will also look fine when displayed under tungsten lighting, anywhere from 2700K - 3400K. Our eyes "white balance" for us down to a certain point.

The color temperature of shadows lit by blue sky can be quite high, since it's only the scattered, mostly blue, light that illuminates there. We should be careful not to evaluate our prints in the shade

Doremus

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5K is bare minimum for daylight, it is effectively what comes from sun directly and still depends of date/time. All other factors move color temperature up, skylight is actually in a range of 10k (and daylight is basic of the two), but all of it is more complicated and I don't think worth a consideration when it comes to viewing prints.

But 5k was for a long time spread around is THE daylight. Now you can see quite a few light sources rated at 6500K.

Coming from 40 years in the graphic arts business, I think 5000 Kelvin was settled on as an average of the many color sources in the viewing world - a managerie of flourescents in retail environments, low wattage reading lights at home, daylight, higher than all the others. We had to have a viewing standard by which to evaluate color correction to imagery used on everything from product packaging to publication printing. People got tired of metameric issues. (I once had a client who insisted on viewing color proofs under her ceiling office flourescents. After several rejections, I finally told her I would need to borrow one of her ceiling fixtures if we were ever to match color, so we could view in the same light, which then, I reminded her, the printer would need to have also for the press run.)
5000K is cool to most folks, but it is the standard, just to end the chaos.

George Collier said:

Coming from 40 years in the graphic arts business, I think 5000 Kelvin was settled on as an average of the many color sources in the viewing world - a managerie of flourescents in retail environments, low wattage reading lights at home, daylight, higher than all the others. We had to have a viewing standard by which to evaluate color correction to imagery used on everything from product packaging to publication printing. People got tired of metameric issues. (I once had a client who insisted on viewing color proofs under her ceiling office flourescents. After several rejections, I finally told her I would need to borrow one of her ceiling fixtures if we were ever to match color, so we could view in the same light, which then, I reminded her, the printer would need to have also for the press run.)
5000K is cool to most folks, but it is the standard, just to end the chaos.

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Ha! I worked for someone who's opinion was, the public (and more importantly, the client) wasn't going to be looking at the ads in a controlled light situation and more likely something similar to the fluorescent lighting in our offices. So he would insist on viewing proofs under our lights. Gave the pre-press engravers ulcers, trying to match our office lighting conditions so they would have an inkling of what a proof might look like when it was delivered for approval. We could go many rounds of proofs to fine tune color that in the end no one on the client side ever--or rarely--commented on.

Classic problem - or those that preferred to hold the proof up to window lighting, any time of day or kind of weather.

George Collier said:

Classic problem - or those that preferred to hold the proof up to window lighting, any time of day or kind of weather.

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I find I have trouble getting this to work in the middle of the night. How do you get enough light from the window when the sun is below the horizon. Please hurry with your answer as I am holding my breathe!

VTLD said:

5K is bare minimum for daylight, it is effectively what comes from sun directly and still depends of date/time. All other factors move color temperature up, ...

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I would tend to think that sunlight in the morning and late afternoon as well as sunlight filtered through smoke, haze, pollution, etc. would have a lower color temperature than 5000K. Certainly the "red sky at night" or "morning" of the old sailors' adage isn't nearly as blue as at midday.

Best,

Doremus

Great thing about standards is that there are so many of them to choose from!

Pick what seems right for you, stick to it and you'll have consistent images.