Colour rendering of skin under fluorescent lamp illumination

The ability of observers to discriminate between five types of fluorescent lamps on the basis of the colour of their own skin has been compared to their ability to make the same discriminations on the basis of four arbitrary object colours and a single grey object colour. The results have been analyzed by various statistical tests, which indicate clearly that skin colour provides a more sensitive indicator of colour rendering than do the other two targets. Multidimensional scaling analyses show that discriminations between the five lamps can be represented in a two‐dimensional space. The first and more important dimension apparently represents the warm‐cool dimension of the colour of the lamps, and the second dimension is related in some way to the colour of objects illuminated by the lamps. Observers were also asked to rate their preferences for the redering of their skin under five lamps. Statistical analysis of the results shows that preference varies from observer to observer and to some extent with experience. Some general trends are evident but detailed analysis of preference in terms of the two‐dimensional space derived from the discrimination results will require more study with a greater variety of lamps.