The Blue Wool Standards

By using the Blue Wool standards it is possible to estimate the lightfastness of a dyed fabric or
paint. This measurement does no more than grade the material on a scale from 1 (fugitive) to 8 (of
good lightfastness); it cannot give us a very good idea of how much exposure to light the material
will stand in any situation.
The Blue Wool standards have been adopted since as ISO International Organisation for
Standardisation) Recommendation R 105 and British Standards BS1006 (1961), so that sample
cards are readily available. Each card contains 8 specially prepared blue dyeings on wool. They are
so chosen that standard number 2 takes roughly twice as long to be perceptibly faded as standard 1,
standard 3 roughly twice as long as standard 2, and so on through to standard 8.
To rate the lightfastness of our material we expose it together with a card of Blue Wool standards,
and from time to time check both our material and the standards for first signs of fading. This can
most easily be done if one half of each patch of colour is covered with an opaque card throughout
the test.
Attempts have been made to measure how much light exposure is required to fade the standards.
They have met with little success, since rates of fading are related to other factors besides the light,
such as proportion of UV, humidity, etc.. The light may appear to be the same but the standards
may be found to fade at quite a different rate, although they keep more or less in rank.
In the museum, however, we can limit our interest to an indoor situation where extremes of
temperature and humidity are avoided and all the light comes through glass though without
specifying UV-filtering. For this special situation Feller has found that the blue wool standard scan
be very useful in grading into three categories (Table 22). It should be noted that the lifetimes
estimated in the table are for an average annual exposure of about 1 million lux hours (1 Mlx
h). Under conditions controlled to 150 lux the annual exposure is about Mlx h so that the figures
could be multiplied by three. With no UV the multiplying factor would be higher still: six or more.

Table 22 Standards of Photochemical Stability for Materials of Conservation

Class

Classification

Intended useful lifetime

Approximate equivalent
Standard of Photochemical
stability

C
B
A

Unstable or fugitive
Intermediate
Excellent

Less than 20 years

(20-100 years)
Greater than 100 years

BSI006 Class 3 or less

(3 to 6)
Greater than BSI006 Class 6

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Damage Versus Wavelength

The potency of radiation for photochemical damage is related to its wavelength, the shorter the
wavelength the more damaging the radiation. This follows from the relation between the
wavelength and the energy of the photon (the quantum of light), where the energy of a mole of
photons (6 x 1023 photons) is 119560/ kilojoules ( = wavelength in nm). But we cannot assume a
direct numerical relation of this nature between damage and wavelength since each substance has
its characteristic response to the colour of the radiation falling on it, absorbing some wavebands
and reflecting others, sensitive to some but not to others.
However the possibility of arriving at some overall average for guidance in the museum has been
tempting, and such a search is legitimate. In 1953 Harrison published a report243 which was
influential in museum circles. In it he proposed a probable relative damage factor for wavelengths
between 300 and 600nm. The factor ranged from a maximum of 7.75 at 300 nm down to zero at
600 nm. This so-called Harrison damage factor was calculated from the damage caused to lowgrade paper by light, and was proposed by him as an interim measure for calculating the relative
effects of UV and of the different kinds of light sources on museum objects. To work out the
relative amount of damage caused by different light sources all one had to do, after adjusting the
spectral energy figures to equal illiminance, was to multiply the energy at each wavelength interval
by the damage factor for the wavelength and sum the result. In this way, for example, the light
from an overcast sky through glass was found to be five times as damaging as light from a tungsten
lamp at the same illuminance.
Feller , has pointed out that in the UV range the deterioration of rubber, the erosion of paint and the
cross linking of certain acrylic polymers follows a similar pattern to that of Harrisons low-grade
paper, and that log (Harrison Damage) plotted against wavelength is close to a straight line with
negative slope.
Let us then, faut de mieux, use this log relation until something better is found to replace it. But
Harrisons calculation can be greatly simplified as follows.
We wish to compare light sources of different colour temperature, from which the UV has been
removed where appropriate, as it should be, for their relative power to damage museum material.
Divide the visible spectrum into five 50 nm bands from 400 to 650 nm and allot relative damage
values from the log scale (see Table 23, which also shows the appropriate luminous efficiency, V,
figures). Next read off the relative energy (E) of the light source in question from its spectral
energy distribution at the centre of each band, and multiply each of these five figures by its
appropriate V (Table 24). The sum of the five E V products gives a relative measure of
luminosity. But all light sources must be compared at the same illuminance, meaning here the same
luminosity, i.e. the same E V.

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Table 23 Simplified Harrison Damage Factors

Waveband (n m)

D (rel. damage)

V (lum, effic.)

400-450
450-500
500-550
500-600
600-650

100
24
5.6
1.3
0.3

0.008
0.115
0.766
0.911
0.323

Table 24 Damage Factors of Daylight and Tungsten Compared

E for D5400 daylight

425

475

525

576

625nm

902

1154

1063

960

854

22.74

45.46

75.76

110.85

451

752

1100

1463

V E = 2104

E for black body at 2850 C

147.4

V E = 212
E for 2850 C normalised to

226

V E = 2104
E E D : D6500 = 125353
2850 C = 39504

Damage ratio D6500/2850C = 12353/39504 = 3.2

Table 24 compares standard daylight to tungsten light, and proposes that standard daylight (with the UV
removed) can be expected to be just over three times as damaging as tungsten illumination. Whether or not
the UV is included in tungsten illumination. Whether or not the UV is included in tungsten makes negligible
difference. One suspects that this result may be truer for moderately stable materials than for very fugitive
dyes. This suspicion is based, for example, on some work by Khn, but also on the extensive work of
Maclaren.
In 1956 Maclaren published a diagram summarising the proportion of fading caused by the visible radiation
in sunlight in about 100 modern dyes of all grades of lightfastness. Maclarens illuminant was total sunlight.
Sunlight through glass (which removes UV at 300 325 n m) will give relatively higher figures for fading by
the visible portion of the spectrum. Harrisons and Maclarens figures can be made if we regard the fastness
of the average museum material susceptible to light at grade 6 on the Blue Wool scale, a far from ridiculous
assumption. In this case we can allot about a quarter of the damage to the visible radiation in sunlight.
But for more fugitive materials, which category includes many textile dyings, the figure for visible radiation
would be higher. On the other hand, colourless polymeric materials of good stability, especially modern
synthetics, and the fastest dyes are probably affected only by UV. Thus it can be seen that no single figure
can be given for damage versus wavelength.

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