Dressing Room Mirror Lights

[Stuart Plymesser]

So having an actor that overheats and sweats easily has caused us to reopen a conversation about converting dressing room mirror incandescent lights to something else that would show off less heat and still keep color proper for makeup purposes.  Has anyone come up with or seen a viable alternative to regular incandescent lightbulbs? 

Thanks!

[Mac Calder]

Waveformlighting make a 99 CRI LED strip - it won't retrofit into a bulb-style dressing room mirror, but you can mount it in a strip with a diffuser.

Alternatively you can get high-CRI Compact Florescents.

[RuthNY]

http://tsp.esta.org/tsp/documents/docs/E1-55_2016_secured.pdf

So having an actor that overheats and sweats easily has caused us to reopen a conversation about converting dressing room mirror incandescent lights to something else that would show off less heat and still keep color proper for makeup purposes.  Has anyone come up with or seen a viable alternative to regular incandescent lightbulbs? 

Thanks!

[KMC]

The specification that Ruth provided is quite helpful.  Reading through this briefly your key points are 1) a color temperature in the 2700-3500K range  (2700 is warmer and will be what most people associate as a "normal" color and 2) CRI rating of 85 or higher.  You can easily find relatively-inexpensive LED lamps that meet both of these criteria.   

I wouldn't go and change every makeup station immediately, but your heat-sensitive performer may be a good test case in considering swapping out all of your makeup lighting for LED.  If you make the switch it will save your facility a considerable amount of energy cost: each lamp will save you roughly 5x its cost in energy over its life, and this doesn't include indirect savings from reduced cooling costs.

In any case (LED or otherwise), keep the specification document handy as it will be a good data point for you to use in the inevitable case that someone deems the quality of your selected lamp unacceptable. 

[RuthNY]

Equity is now using this as the basis for required mirror light in dressing rooms. It's the new standard!

Thanks for breaking down the information for all of us, KMC!

Ruth

The specification that Ruth provided is quite helpful.  Reading through this briefly your key points are 1) a color temperature in the 2700-3500K range  (2700 is warmer and will be what most people associate as a "normal" color and 2) CRI rating of 85 or higher.  You can easily find relatively-inexpensive LED lamps that meet both of these criteria.   

I wouldn't go and change every makeup station immediately, but your heat-sensitive performer may be a good test case in considering swapping out all of your makeup lighting for LED.  If you make the switch it will save your facility a considerable amount of energy cost: each lamp will save you roughly 5x its cost in energy over its life, and this doesn't include indirect savings from reduced cooling costs.

In any case (LED or otherwise), keep the specification document handy as it will be a good data point for you to use in the inevitable case that someone deems the quality of your selected lamp unacceptable.

[Stuart Plymesser]

This is great information.  The Lighting Supervisor is getting some LED lights with an acceptable CRI and color temp at one station and then get some feedback before changing other stations.   Thank you for the help!

[cdavisnyc]

We also have on/off and dimmer control right at the counter level for segments of mirror lighting, maybe 2-3 stations per segment. It's super easy to keep the overhead lights on all the time, and just turn up the mirror lights when it's time to put on makeup. Otherwise, the room gets too warm too quickly.

(Conversely, at nap time between shows, sometimes people will turn off the overheads and turn on the mirror lights at a very low level. Super cozy.)

[abhibeckert]

We've had a terrible heat wave the last couple weeks and I've been struggling to manage temperatures especially during matinee runs.

Our mirrors use standard E27 bulbs and it was bad enough we considered removing every second one, just deal with the reduced light. But in the end we installed LED bulbs. They generate almost no heat — perfect.

I wouldn't assume that's true of all bulbs, at full brightness my LED torch gets dangerously hot (I've burned my fingers a few times). Fortunately don't use it at full brightness very often.

Beware a lot of dimmable LEDs "lower" their brightness by basically strobing at full brightness. Gives some people a headache, the lower the brightness the worse it is.

[KMC]

This is great information.  The Lighting Supervisor is getting some LED lights with an acceptable CRI and color temp at one station and then get some feedback before changing other stations.   Thank you for the help!

Please do let us know how it turns out!