Most statue collections are lit badly, and the usual failure is not too little light but the wrong kind. A hand-painted polystone piece is a painting with a third dimension, and the rules museums use for paintings apply to it: cool light, modest brightness, and nothing that cooks the paint. This guide sets out what those rules are, what they mean for a glass cabinet in a British living room, and what to buy.
Does LED lighting fade or damage a painted statue?
Far less than anything that came before it. The Canadian Conservation Institute, whose technical bulletins are the working reference for museum lighting, puts it plainly: a white LED beam carries no infrared, so it is "completely cold", and its ultraviolet output is negligible — three orders of magnitude below the blue peak by the time the spectrum reaches the UV boundary. The comparison it draws is the useful one. A 60 W incandescent bulb, a 35 W halogen and a 9 W LED all produce roughly the same two watts of visible light; the rest — about 58, 33 and 7 watts respectively — is heat. Halogen cabinet lamps, which many older display units still carry, are the ones to remove.
What LED does not change is the arithmetic of exposure. Light damage is cumulative: intensity multiplied by time. The American Museum of Natural History's guidance notes that a low light left on twenty-four hours a day does the same damage as a bright one for a short period. A cabinet lit on a timer for the evenings will outlast one lit permanently, whatever the lamp.
How bright should a display cabinet be?
Museums light painted and polychrome objects at around 150 lux, and stone and metal at up to 300. Textiles and paper get 50. A statue with a fabric cape or printed base graphics sits at the sensitive end of that range, because dyes and organic pigments fade first — the conservation literature lists bright reds, purples, oranges and yellows among the most fugitive colourants, and Jackson's Art's pigment guide makes the same point for modern paint: organic pigments fade, earth pigments hardly at all. In practice, a cabinet does not need to be bright to look lit. Because the surroundings of a display cabinet are usually dim, a modest lamp reads as dramatic.
What colour temperature and CRI should statue lighting be?
Two numbers on the box matter. Colour temperature, in kelvin, sets the warmth: 2700 K is candle-warm, 3000 K is neutral-warm, 4000 K and above reads clinical. The CCI's survey of lamps found the widest choice of good and excellent lamps around 3000 K, and recommends it as the general-purpose museum choice. Colour rendering index tells you how faithfully the lamp shows colour; the CCI grades a lamp "excellent" at CRI 90 or above with a strong R9 (red) score. Cheap LED strips are often CRI 80 with a weak red, which is why a red cape looks brown under them. Buy 90+ and the paintwork looks the way the studio intended.
Which IKEA cabinet lights fit a statue display?
Checked against IKEA UK's listings in September 2026, the integrated range has changed since most collector guides were written — the VAXMYRA, IRSTA and STÖTTA lamps the forums still recommend no longer appear on the UK site. What is sold now: the MITTLED LED spotlight (£9, 2700 K, 150 lumens, dimmable), the YTBERG side-mounted cabinet lamp (£9, 120 lumens) and the TVÄRDRAG angled cabinet lamp (£19, 130 lumens, screw or adhesive mounting). All three need a driver — the TRÅDFRI 30 W driver is £22 — and a FÖRNIMMA connection cord (£7). For the RUDSTA and FABRIKÖR cabinets our scale guide recommends, one spotlight per shelf, mounted at the front edge and angled back, is the arrangement that lights the face rather than the top of the head.
What about LED strips?
Strips work, with two caveats. They run warm, and a strip stuck directly to glass or laminate with nothing to draw the heat away shortens its own life and puts a warm line an inch from the paint; an aluminium channel solves both. And an unshielded strip shows as a row of dots reflected in every glossy surface in the cabinet, so use one with an opal diffuser. The manufacturer guides on this are trade sources rather than independent ones, but the physics is not contested.
Why it matters if you are holding a reservation
Most of what we sell is months away, which is the right time to sort the cabinet out. A piece that arrives to a lit, measured shelf is one you enjoy from the day it lands; a piece that arrives to a halogen lamp and a south-facing window is one you spend the next year worrying about. If you are reserving something with fabric elements — a Sideshow Premium Format, a Hot Toys figure, Prime 1's capes and cloaks — treat the textile numbers above as the ones that apply to the whole piece.
Sources
- LED Lighting in Museums and Art Galleries, Technical Bulletin 36 — Canadian Conservation Institute — the heat and UV comparison, and the 3000 K / CRI 90 guidance.
- Agents of deterioration: light, ultraviolet and infrared — Canadian Conservation Institute — lux levels by material and which colourants fade first.
- Light, ultraviolet and infrared — American Museum of Natural History — cumulative exposure.
- Integrated lighting — IKEA UK — product names and prices, checked September 2026.
Halidom's open editions list the height of every piece, so you can plan the shelf, and the lamp, before it arrives.