Color Matching Light Cabinets

Color matching light cabinet is a light booth designed to provide a standard set of lighting conditions for visual color inspection. The three most common types of light sources used in the world are incandescent, fluorescent and daylight. In theory, if the product color matches under these light sources in the cabinet, it will match in the real world.

Image: GTI Light Cabinet

Typically:

1. the daylight light source replicates the natural lighting - outdoor lighting
2. the incandescent for the tungsten light bulb and
3. fluorescent for the CFL light bulbs used for lighting up the office, mall and home.

Another light source commonly found in light cabinets is ultraviolet (UV) light. UV is used to observe the presence of fluorescence materials. The next time, when you are in a disco, observe how white fabrics glowed under UV lighting.

Light cabinets are used by manufacturers to ensure that their products matches in these lighting conditions and minimise color differences and metamerism.

The color difference between the zipper and the master color is larger under daylight than under tungsten light. Which means that it would look odd outdoor or in a place lit by fluorescent lighting.

Observe that the zipper has optical brightener agent (OBA) or fluorescence whitening agent (FWA) which causes the zipper to 'glow' under UV lighting whereas the master color has no OBA or FWA and under UV light (which has no color component), the sample looks 'black'.

This is not an optical illusion. It can be scientifically explained.

Welcome to the world of colors.