Impact of backgrounds and light scenes' characteristics on paintings' perception

In recent years LED light sources' characteristics rapidly improved while their costs decreased, making their use more and more widespread. In more detail, LEDs' colour rendering index (CRI) was constantly upgraded; such parameter is important to guarantee a good colour perception in indoor environments in order to ensure users' comfort and wellbeing. People's colour perception is also affected by environmental conditions, such as surfaces' optical characteristics, light sources' spectral power distribution (SPD) and illuminance levels. This topic is particularly relevant in museums, the main goal of which is to enhance artworks' perception by choosing the proper lighting system and setting's characteristics. To investigate how people perceive an artwork when changing light scenes' and setting's characteristics, a test on 21 subjects was carried out and the results are reported in this paper.