Lighting conditions airbrush work space

Generally, you’ll want the brightest light (measured in the number of lumens) coming from above and behind your head. Medium light from the sides (more or less equal brightness but not more and preferably a little less bright than the overhead). Any light on the side of the object opposite from your eyes should be dimmer than the overhead or side lights.

So, for your spray booth, you should be able to light it from the front sides with desk or floor lamps and position it so that you also have a ceiling light above and slightly behind you. Because of the roof of the spray booth, the ceiling light might be better if you can lower it to just above your head height when seated in front of the spray booth. An option might be a tall floor lamp positioned behind your chair to shine over your head to your front. In any event, you want the light to shine at the object and not into your eyes. That usually means don’t face the window with your spray booth between you and it. The light from outside during the day will shine into your eyes and make seeing into the booth more difficult.

You may have to adjust the brightness and angle of the lights to reduce any glare from the wet paint. You can test this by holding a piece of aluminum foil in the spray booth and judging how the light reflects off of it. You should be able to see all the details of the foil without any objectionable glare.

Daylight balanced 3500-5500 K and as close to 100 CRI (color reproduction index) will give the best light for judging colors.

You can get bulbs in these ranges fairly inexpensively now days.

These bulbs are rated for 3000 K and 100 CRI and come in two different lumen ranges:

Solux Color View Bulbs

They’re only about US$2.50 each. However, you can probably find similar bulbs online or at your local big-box store. There are also similar LED and tube and compact florescent bulbs.