LED bulbs can damage paintings

(vrt.be)

9 points | by CGMthrowaway 7 hours ago ago

6 comments

  • cwillu 5 hours ago

    The description of LEDs as a monolithic device makes me strongly doubt the conclusion reached. Alas, there's no link to the paper to see how they addressed the wildly varying types of LEDs and why other types of bulbs emitting a similar spectrum wouldn't have the same issue.

    Edit: oh jesus, this article is from 2013.

    • cwillu 5 hours ago

      This appears to be the paper: https://hal.science/hal-05385645v1/file/Monico%202025.pdf

      [edit]: this is clearly not the paper, as it was published in 2025, and the hn link is from 2013. Regardless, it makes only passing mention of commercial LED, certainly nothing that supports the claims in the article, nor does it mention in the paper body anything that appears to be referencing previous analysis of the lighting, so the search continues.

      • shakna 5 hours ago

        This is the 2013 paper [0], which won the SILS-SPECS PhD Award.

        [0] https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/ac302158b

        • cwillu 4 hours ago

          That's apparently only one part, and that particular part contains no mention of LEDs at all.

          Edit: I've also looked at parts 2 and 4, which also contain no mentions.

          https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21314201/ is part 1, and talks about the artificially aged samples, but again doesn't appear to contain anything about LEDs specifically.

          I'm not sure I want to spend a whole lot more time on this; everything I've read suggests they're looking at just plain old “light causes reactions, here's the specific reactions that occur with pigments containing these compounds, see how they're sensitive to these particular wavelengths?”, none of which is particular to the source of those wavelengths; specifically, I see no reason why an incandescent bulb of similar temperature light wouldn't also carry those same wavelengths, nor why it would be a property of LEDs, when the output spectrums of common LEDs vary widely.

          Interesting research certainly, but not anything that supports the hn title.

          • shakna 4 hours ago

            The "Portable Raman" is an LED device.

  • exabrial 4 hours ago

    Yeah I doubt it