Journal

Specifying linear light for galleries

A trade guide to continuous washes, CRI priorities, and install details that keep curators calm and walls even.

Gallery walls fail quietly: a hot stripe near the ceiling, a muddy mid-wall, and a curator who stops trusting the room. Linear light done well disappears into the architecture and leaves the work even. Full pathway notes live under culture & galleries solutions.

What to put on the drawing

• Setback and aim, distance from wall and mounting height for a smooth vertical gradient.
• CRI / Rf, specify high colour fidelity for pigments; do not settle for generic “80 CRI.”
• Continuous runs, call out joiners, end caps, and cut lengths so the line does not break visually.
• Driver location, remote accessible voids; avoid stuffing drivers into inaccessible coves.

Gallery Strip vs Ribbon Recess

Gallery Strip suits surface or discreet track-adjacent installs where curators need flexibility. Ribbon Recess is the plaster-in answer when the architect wants a trimless luminous line that reads as architecture.

Install discipline

We see most failures at junctions, slight gaps, mismatched bins between batches, or dimming that bands. Order continuous binning, mock up one bay, then roll out. Pretoria and Cape Town humidity swings also favour sealed joints and documented torque on mounting hardware.

Need a drawing pack? Email hello@brightdisplay.co.za with ceiling heights and wall lengths, we answer with details, not slogans. Pair Gallery Strip or Ribbon Recess with the culture & galleries schedule.