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Color Temperature is another factor determining how colors appear to the eye under a specific lamp. The concept is fairly intuitive in that warm colors will be more vibrant under ‘warm’ lamps and cool colors are richer under ‘cooler’ light sources. Incandescent bulbs emit warm, if not yellow, light while halogen lamps such as those found in most contemporary track lighting, cable lighting and monorail lighting systems emit extremely white light in the mid to slightly warm range.

In short, halogen lamps are excellent choices when lighting artwork.

Choose a Lamp with Proper Beam Spread
One lighting problem unique to artwork is that the size of the lighted area is very specific. Although the size of the cone of light that surrounds the artwork need not be the exact size of a specific piece, an extremely large cone lighting a small piece may look odd since the eye will be drawn from the piece to the illuminated wall. More importantly, the cone must be wide enough to illuminate the entire target area. Lamp choice is the easiest way to vary the width of a light cone without moving fixtures. Choosing the proper lamp is simple once you understand the concept of beam spread.

A lamp's beam spread is simply the width of the cone of light it emits as you move away from the source. Popular labels for lamps with different beam spreads are spots and floods. In reality, commonly available lamp beam spreads vary from 10 to 60 degrees calling for the addition of more specific terms such as ‘narrow flood’ or ‘wide flood’ for lamps along the spectrum. Brilliant Lighting defines each as follows:

- “spot” describes lamps with a beam spread of less than 15 degrees
- “narrow flood” describes lamps with a beam spread between 15 and 30 degrees
- “flood” describes lamps with a beam spread between 30 and 50 degrees
- “wide flood” describes lamps with a beam spread greater than 50 degrees