Museum lighting has a direct impact on the visual presentation of artworks. For Chinese paintings, which are rich in colour and possess high artistic value, their high sensitivity to light often necessitates the use of low illuminance and colour temperature settings in exhibition halls. However, these settings can affect viewers’ preferences for the colours of paintings. To address this issue, this study conducted psycho-physical experiments in a simulated museum exhibition environment using four Chinese paintings. The experiments evaluated viewers’ preference under the coupling of multiple lighting parameters, including fidelity index (Illuminating Engineering Society (IES) R f ), gamut index (IES R g ) and 16 local chroma shifts. The results showed that the warm or cool tone of the paintings significantly influenced participants’ preference ratings. Further classification and cluster analysis revealed that the colour preference for warm-toned paintings was mainly influenced by parameters R cs , h 5 , R cs , h 9 and R f , while for cool-toned paintings, preference was associated with R cs , h 5 , R cs , h 11 and R g . Separate mathematical models were developed, and lighting parameter thresholds were evaluated accordingly. This study provides mathematical support for the selection of lighting sources and the formulation of standards for Chinese paintings with different tonal characteristics, offering significant practical value for museum lighting applications.