CRI 90+ Doesn’t Mean Great Light. Here’s What You’re Missing.
For years, one number has dominated conversations about colour quality in lighting: CRI. We hear specifications such as: “CRI >90.” “CRI 95.” “High CRI LED.” But there is a problem. Two light sources can both have CRI 90 and still make the same space, material or product look noticeably different. That is because colour rendering is far more complex than a single CRI number can communicate. This is where TM-30 becomes important. The current standard, ANSI/IES TM-30-24 , evaluates colour rendition using a much broader analytical framework, including 99 colour evaluation samples , overall fidelity, gamut and hue-specific changes. IES Webstore First: What is TM-30? TM-30 is a method developed by the Illuminating Engineering Society to evaluate how a light source renders colours compared with a reference illuminant. Traditional CRI primarily gives us an average fidelity score. TM-30 goes much further. Instead of asking only: “How accurately does this light reproduce colour?” ...