Lighting Designers
National Trust
Battery Powered Fine Art Lighting

Our lighting designers were asked by the National Trust to provide potential ways to light fine art paintings & objects for the Belton House new illuminating stories exhibition.

Since its construction in 1665-88 Belton House built a name for being one of the treasure houses of England. Over the years the collection was added to by members of the family. This stately home is one of the most visited Nation Trust properties in England.

The idea behind the exhibition was to uniquely light objects within rooms on a pathfinder tour of this magnificent stately home.

However there was one problem, the exhibition concept needed light! Due to its age there was a total lack of either existing lighting or mains power where the objects were to be displayed.

Simon Morris one of our lighting designers agreed to attend an initial meeting at Belton House. His visit was to explore and suggest ideas to overcome this situation. Equipped with various battery powered LED fine art lighting mock-ups, he met with the management & curatorial team.

During the meeting the various mock-ups were tested some of which were battery powered. The effects were amazing as can be seen from the images. Due to the sensitivity of the materials on display National Trust properties are usually kept on the dark side trying to achieve a 50 lux ambient light.

Once possible solutions had been found for all the objects on display, the Belton House team asked Simon if he would return and work with the National Trust volunteers to realise his lighting suggestions.

Obviously some of these lighting techniques had not been used before by our lighting designers. This was very much designing the battery powered art lighting on the fly, adjusting the designs to suite the situation.
The various lighting solutions were produced and installed ready for the Belton House grand opening at the beginning of March.  

We were later informed that the battery powered art lighting for the 4 sconces mounted on the rooms panelled walls worked beyond expectations! With the high powered rechargeable batteries only replaced every 100 to 120 hours (3 to 4 weeks @ 5 hours a day).

Since this National Trust project we have used similar battery powered methodology on other fine art lighting projects where building conservation issues meant it wasn’t possible to run mains electric to the various locations.

Fine Art Lighting Design Services

Consultations
Resolving Poor Art Lighting
Light Level Monitoring
UV Monitoring
Conservation Lighting
Focusing of Lighting
Exhibition Lighting
Detailed Lighting Specification
LED & Fibre Optic Lighting
Alternative Power Solutions
Lighting Controls
Energy Saving Solutions

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