Development of a three-dimensional color rendition space for tunable solid-state light sources

The quality of building electric lighting systems can be assessed using color rendition metrics. However, color rendition metrics are limited in quantifying tunable solid-state light sources, since tunable lighting systems can generate a vast number of different white light spectra, providing flexibility in terms of color quality and energy efficiency. Previous research suggests that color rendition is multi-dimensional in nature, and it cannot be simplified to a single number. Color shifts under a test light source in comparison to a reference illuminant, changes in color gamut, and color discrimination are important dimensions of the quality of electric light sources, which are not captured by a single-numbered metric. To address the challenges in color rendition characterization of modern solid-state light sources, the development of a multi-dimensional color rendition space is proposed. The proposed continuous measure can quantify the change in color rendition ability of tunable solid-state light devices with caveats. Future work, discretization of the continuous color rendition space, will be carried out to address the shortcomings of a continuous three-dimensional space.