Gairloch Heritage Museum

  • Client
    Campbell & Co
  • Location
    Gairloch, Scotland
  • Photography
    © Mark Appleton Photography
  • Sector
    Museums

We love lighting unusual spaces, so when we were approached by museum designers Campbell & Co to work with them on the Gairloch Heritage Museum’s new home in a renovated 1950s Anti-Aircraft Operations room, we were intrigued.

The new museum would display a unique collection of artefacts of local significance, such as the huge lens from the Rubh Re lighthouse and the Poolewe Hoard of Bronze Age objects. While the outside of the building had been re-clad and rendered giving a very modern appearance, the interior was largely left in its original brutalist, low ceilinged state. Our challenge was bring lighting to the darker areas of the interior and add focus to the exhibits.

As with most museum lighting projects we needed to deliver high quality lighting fit for their current exhibitions which could be adapted for future displays. To bring out the true colour and detail of each artefact, we selected the B710 Kuper Ore track spotlight for its high 97 colour rendering index (CRI). The Ore’s onboard dimmer would provide the museum with individual control of each light along a track and each could be self-dimmed. The Kuper spotlights are versatile and allow for the direction and light levels to be altered.

No museum visit is complete without the option to ‘exit via the giftshop’ and Gairloch is no exception. For the retail areas, we selected the B611 Kuper track spotlight which also has an option for self-dimming and individual precise control.

Lights used