Those are the radios in the photo. I adjusted the light levels, but it’s not bright enough on that shelf.
I sort of stumbled into this collection. I had the three on the sides for years and two of them were gifts from my wife after I bought the first one because I liked it so much. Then yesterday, I saw that beautiful one in the middle in an antique store/junk shop for $18 and had to have it. Now we have it on that bookshelf in the photo to display them all, but the lighting is really inadequate. I want to install a light above them at the top of the shelf to show them off better, but I really don’t know much about this stuff in terms of what sort of light I should be using and I don’t want to waste my money on the wrong one.
None of my searching for how to light a Bakelite radio brings up anything fruitful no matter what search terms I can think to use.
Any ideas?
One last thought- Bakelite seems to love dust. I’m going to dust them regularly, but if there is a way to light them well without making the dust show up well, that would be great.
brass arm with green glass shade mounted above, with a low wattage incandescent bulb (like 25w).
Or something like this https://www.rejuvenation.com/products/regis-picture-light-cp/?pkey=cpicture-lights&position=0
Paint the wall Urban Bronze
Awesome, thanks!
Because they’re dark they need direct lighting, with a blue tint preferably
Your two best options are either lighting from underneath, or from concentrated spotlights from above and away from them. So spotlights with narrow beams, on the ceiling above but a metre or so away from the shelf
I doubt I can convince my wife to let me install ceiling lighting, so it has to be overhead. But the blue tint is a great suggestion, thanks!
Just a quick point for your photos in future. You probably want to try using HDR mode. HDR (High Dynamic Range) takes a set of 3 photos at different light levels and mixes them to squeeze the full range into a photo rather than having some parts completely black and some completely white. Give it a try if your phone camera supports it. You need to hold very still for the photo to work otherwise it will be blurry, but the quality is fantastic if you can be still.
I usually do HDR, but it’s really dark under that shelf and I couldn’t hold it still enough.
Not a designer but I would suggest getting a lamp to light from above/in front and a led bulb you can change the color on to try out different colors, blue or gold color are usually decent. But having the ability to dial in the color is useful to make it suit your tastes. I’ve found some nice lamps at yard or estate sales for cheap.
