Has anyone found a sweet spot using 2700–3500K tunable white to keep works at 50 lux without flattening surfaces? I’m testing 12° spots with cross-aimed grazes and occupancy dips to 20% between visitors, holding around 0.35 W/ft², and I’d love to hear what’s worked for you.
And i’ve kept texture at 50 lux by raising the occupancy dip from “20% between visitors” to about 28–30% with a driver low‑end trim, since a lot of 2700–3500K engines skew a touch green below about 25% and flatten surfaces. It barely nudges the 0.35 W/ft² total and keeps your 12° cross‑grazes reading as relief.
Try a slight “cooler key, warmer fill”: keep the fill around 2700K and bump the 12° key to about 3100K with a honeycomb, so you still cap at 50 lux but get crisper micro‑shadows. In our works‑on‑paper room that plus a source with TM‑30 Rg about 102 kept relief without pushing past about 0.33 W/ft². @dwheeler34, have you tried a small negative duv at low dim to keep warmth without the mush?
Have you tried swapping one of the “12° spots” for a 10×30 oval rotated with the surface grain? That gave me more relief at the same “0.35 W/ft²”, since the softer long axis preserves specular cues without pushing your max; I also save a low-level preset about 200 K cooler to offset warm drift at dim and keep micro‑shadows.