Object color naturalness and attractiveness with spectrally optimized illumination

Previous analyses have shown that optimizing illuminants' spectral power distributions for object reflectance can yield energy savings in excess of 40% by reducing the light lost to absorption. Here, commercially available LEDs and real objects, instead of theoretical spectra and test sample colors, are investigated. Simulations show that energy savings of up to 15% are possible when illuminating common objects with mixtures of narrowband LEDs, compared to illumination by reference phosphor-coated white LEDs, without inducing changes in color appearance. Experiments show that higher energy savings are achievable without degrading object appearance. Object optical properties impact the success of this approach.