May 2025
What We’ve Sacrificed with the Rise of LED Luminaires in Architecture
MFA Lighting Design Thesis Faculty: Craig Bernecker, Francesca Bastianini. Thesis Seminar Faculty: Kyle McGahan
MFA Lighting Design Thesis Faculty: Craig Bernecker, Francesca Bastianini. Thesis Seminar Faculty: Kyle McGahan
As LED technology rapidly replaced older light sources in architectural lighting design, efficiency became king — but at what cost? My thesis explores the human impact of that transition, asking whether we’ve sacrificed visual quality, especially in how light renders color and skin tones, in the name of energy savings.
While architecture embraced LEDs for their efficiency, theatre lighting has resisted moving on from tungsten — favoring visual fidelity over energy metrics. In fact, theatrical environments have often served as testbeds for lighting innovation, with greater sensitivity to how light shapes the human experience and less of the regulatory hurdles.
One such innovation is ETC’s Lustr 3, a theatrical fixture using eight color LEDs to achieve a fuller, more natural spectrum — at the expense of efficiency, cost, and size. But do these spectral advantages result in perceptual improvements that average people can detect?
The Study
To find out, I designed a perceptual study comparing three light sources: ETC Lustr 3 (8-chip) ETC ColorSource V (3-chip RGB) SATCO LED PAR38 (static white).
L3
Participants (15) sat in a controlled lightbox and were exposed to each luminaire across three color temperatures: 2700K, 3000K, and 3500K. For each lighting condition, they rated attributes like comfort, warmth, and skin tone rendering, and selected their preferred source.
Key Findings
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No clear winner. While most participants preferred the Lustr or ColorSource over the static LED, the results weren’t statistically significant.
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Subjectivity matters. Preferences varied greatly. One participant stayed consistent, but 87% chose the same fixture twice — even if not all three times.
- Qualitative insights were richer. Comments frequently (4) referenced skin tone rendering , particularly under the Lustr but rated the ColorSource as the best at color quality. A larger sample size is needed.
Theme incidence by illuminant
What It Tells Us
Although high-tech metrics like TM-30 scores and SPD graphs offer valuable data, they can’t capture personal, perceptual nuances. The ColorSource, despite being technically “worse,” was favored by many. This raises a critical question: When did we stop asking people if they like the light they’re under instead of only relying on quantified metrics?
Final Thoughts
We’ve come to accept lower fidelity lighting as a necessary trade-off for efficiency. But maybe it’s time to rethink that compromise — or at least ask better questions. Because in the evolution of lighting technology, the human experience shouldn’t be the first thing we dim.