Virtual Reality (VR) has great potential to become a usable design tool for the planning of light and colour in buildings. However, the complex interaction between light and objects makes the problem of lighting scenes a central conceptual and practical problem of computer graphics. This paper aims at discussing the problem of translating reality to its digital counterpart. We deal with methodological issues concerning how to compare visual results between different media, mixed adaptation and arbitrary parameter setting in the software. Our comparison between a 25 m² real room and different VR-simulations showed various problems related to the translation and comparison of reality to VR.Data were collected from video recorded interviews with 56 observers. Colour appearance was assessed with semantic descriptions, magnitude estimation and colour matching. Measurements of reflectance, luminance and spectral composition were made.