Many Ways to Welcome in the Light

Imagine it: Full-on, streaming-through-the-windows, head-to-toe-warming sunlight.

Just what our winter-weary bodies long for on an early spring day. Just the kind of light we want filling our kitchens, our great rooms, our foyers.

Or do we?

Listen to Steven Weintraub's cautionary tales of unfiltered light and you may reconsider. Weintraub is a conservator at Art Preservation Services in New York City. He has seen firsthand how unfiltered light damages some of our country's most valuable artifacts, photographs and paintings. Take the case of Martha Washington's pink shoes—an example he often likes to cite. Acquired by the Museum of the City of New York in 1951, the First Lady's footwear bleached to a ghostly cream color after nearly a decade of exposure to the sun.

Of course, it is not psychologically desirable or even practical to block light out of spaces simply to preserve the objects housed within them. A connection to the outdoors is also vital to our sense of wellbeing and plays an important role in generating beneficial emotional and physical responses.

The simplest options for controlling the amount of natural light coming through a window: outfitting the window with tinted glass or with blinds, shutters, shades, shadings, sheers or louvers. Blinds and shutters use louvers to control light, and come in many forms and materials–vertical or horizontal, wood, metal, fabric or plastic. The louvered elements of both blinds and shutters are variable and control privacy and views. They work by deflecting daylight and allowing the amount of reflected and direct light entering a space to be varied.

Light-diffusing shades, particularly those made of horizontal hexagonal cells–or honeycombs–scatter and deflect outside light by sifting it through a double layer of translucent material. They further disperse the sun's rays by means of angled surfaces, sending light off in different directions. "Such shades can shut out up to 98 percent of UV rays and can reduce damaging heat build-up on sensitive organic materials such as wood by close to 80 percent," notes Wendell Colson, Hunter Douglas Vice President of Design and Development.

Weintraub also offers several suggestions for protecting light-sensitive objects in both museum and residential environments:

First, create contrast between an object and its surroundings. Cutting down on ambient light with window coverings and other methods allow you to highlight objects without having to wash them with damaging illumination levels.
Controlling the ambient light in adjacent spaces—that is, keeping those light sources minimal—means you will not perceive the room, or the objects in it, as dark.
Placing objects away from high-contrast conditions, such as between a pair of windows instead of in front of them, allows them to be seen in fuller detail, because eyes adjust to the adjacent brightness and not the object.
Control the cumulative light on objects over time. The issue is not so much the level of light they receive periodically, but over their lifetimes.

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