Diamonds are one of the most challenging materials to light.  Common wisdom about lighting diamonds abounds, but very little of it has been tested.  At the outset of this project, Lux Populi tested various lighting solutions and environments for diamonds to explore what solutions generated the most rich experience of the diamonds.  In fact, diamonds have various properties and different lighting solutions emphasize different results.  As so often happens at Lux Populi, investigation leads to more questions, more choices, prioritization.  Which of the famous C’s of diamonds would we prioritize?  Clarity?  Cut?  Carat? Color?  Or that most intangible of properties?  Sparkle.

One of the basic rules of lighting is that every sparkle is a single reflection of a single light source.  A room replete with light sources will generate sparkle off any good diamond – emphasizing cut (including the number of reflecting sources) and clarity.  Appropriate color temperatures represent clarity well, that’s easy.  But Carat?  “Does this lighting make my rock look big?”  Capturing insights from our client, and through testing, we concluded that the solution was in having some areas sources, some points, with differentiated color and color temperature, spread across an arc of view – the arc causing adjacent facets within each diamond to differentiate, providing a visual understanding of volume.