Quality of the daylight sources for industrial colour control

Information is presented based on measurements, published literature and the findings of the CIE Technical Committee TC1‐44 Practical Daylight Sources for Colorimetry. For visual colour control, filtered incandescent lamps, filtered xenon short‐arc lamps, fluorescent lamps and light‐emitting diode sources are used as daylight simulators, while, in today’s industrial reflectance spectrophotometers, pulsed xenon lamps are used. Practical daylight simulators exist with characteristics satisfying the major national and international standards, but most of the commercially available colour‐matching booths do not comply with these standards, in spite of the claims made by manufacturers. For instrumental control, well‐maintained and calibrated sources may provide acceptable daylight simulation.