Keeping in view the celebrated light qualities of Long Island, thoughtful day lighting and electric lighting designs have been installed in the Parrish Art Museum.

To provide supplemental balanced illumination, the ceilings of the museum has been decorated with lighting design, featuring rectangular skylights that provide ambient natural light, with a straightforward array of exposed fluorescent lamps. The windows and skylights are supplemented by bare fluorescent battens.

Fluorescent lights are used in the museum, which contradicts the complexity of the electric lighting design. The bespoke fixtures have been designed to custom lengths to fit into the structure’s frame members, helping to maintain the building’s clean lines.

A balanced lighting scheme has been installed in the side-mounted sockets, which produce a uniform line of light. The careful installation of the selected bulbs has resulted in excellent colour-rendering properties, which enables the viewers to see the artwork more accurately.

Taking care of sustainability, art conservation, curatorial flexibility and budget, carefully selected lighting schemes have been installed throughout the museum. The provision for extensive daylight in the museum and efficient fluorescent fixtures saves substantial energy and cost in comparison to standard museum lighting designs.

In order to protect the art work from excessive daylight, planned lighting schemes have been installed in each gallery by coating relevant windows with high-performance ultraviolet film and using simple fabric stretchers to cover skylights. When reduced light levels are necessary, simple 3′ x 6′ panels of fabric chosen to suit the desired light levels can be installed manually at the skylights by gallery staff.

To achieve the blackout conditions, there is also a provision of using opaque fabric stretchers. An iPad-controlled gallery dimming system has also been updated to provide the staff members with the ability to adjust electric gallery lighting as needed.

The Parrish Art Museum is designed by the Switzerland-based design practice Herzog & de Meuron, which opened on 10 November 2012.