Design Theory Archives - Page 7 of 14

EXPOSURE: Designing Lighting

Cover for Designing Lighting magazine for August 2022

The first article in my series on residential lighting for Designing Lighting is out, and I am honored to be a part of this magazine! Getting the series together was not easy, however, and I have a long way to go before all six articles are complete. What makes this hard? Writing for a peer […]

EXPOSURE: The Pretty Good House

Book cover of Pretty Good House: A Guide to Creating Better Homes

What makes a pretty good house? My first exposure to the Taunton Press was as an avid reader of Sarah Susanka’s The Not So Big House books. Taunton is also responsible for Fine Homebuilding (to which I subscribe and for whom I have written) and Fine Woodworking, among others. Now Taunton has published a new […]

THINK LIGHT: the case for color

An illustration of a judge's gavel in front of a rainbow

I am continually amazed at the lack of color in our lighting, at home and at work. We wear colored clothing, drive colored cars, paint our homes and cabinets in color, and hang colored photos and art on our walls. We choose colored carpets and colored ceramic tile, we buy colored backpacks and purses, some […]

Okay Lighting Design

A thumbs-up on the left side with the words "good lighting design" below it, and a thumbs-down on the right with the words "bad lighting design" below it

Lighting designers are trained from birth…okay, that’s an exaggeration and a cliche, so this blog post is not off to the best start. Where was I? Ah yes, lighting designers are trained to know the difference between good lighting design and bad lighting design. This morning I pondered the possibility that this embedded understanding of […]

THINK LIGHT: Field of (viewing) Dreams

A diagram of a human's field of view, both peripheral and macular

My THINK LIGHT series is my outlet for being a lighting geek. Perhaps I should rephrase that – this is my outlet for being a lighting pseudo-geek. I do love the science, geometry, biology, psychology, and technology of light, but I am no scientist, biologist, psychologist, or technologist. There is a limit to how geeky […]

THINK LIGHT: Has anyone seen my light meter?

An illustration of the head of a white man with brown hair. One of his eyes is replaced by a reader from a light reader, a cord connects to the meter. Script below the head reads "the lighting cyborg"

This post might make some of my lighting colleagues a little angry, because I’m going to claim that light meters are nearly useless tools. I’m going to claim that the numbers we produce, the foot-candle levels or lux we calculate and measure, the math behind lighting design is all rather pointless. (And before you write […]

1THING: New Build Dining Rooms

An illustration of two figures with their arms around each others' shoulders. They are encompassed by a bright yellow circle behind them. Below them, script text reads "get comfortable with a lighting hug."

This post brings dining rooms into my 1THING: New Build series, but you’ll have to skip ahead or slog through some early morning musings to get there. Sorry. Blogging is a bit of weird phenomenon. Here I sit, week after week, writing about lighting with no deadlines, no paycheck, and no guarantee that what I write will […]

1THING: Plug In Bedroom Lighting

A silhouetted figure reading on a bed in a bedroom. There is a ceiling fan on the ceiling and a table across the room on the other side of the image. The ceiling fan has a light. A big, bright arrow points from the light to the face of the figure. White text near the light reads "this light can hurt you" and points with a thin, white arrow to the ceiling fan light. Script text below the image reads "How to make a bedroom more comfortable..."

When it comes to plug-in lighting upgrades in the bedroom, the bedside table lamp is a runaway favorite. Both useful and ubiquitous, this staple of decorative lighting needs no introduction. And devoting an entire blog post to them might be considered a waste of time. That means I will probably write about bedside lamps someday, […]

What is Lighting Design?

On the left, there is a light switch connected to two light fixtures by a wire. All three items have a red tag with a white $ indicating that this is an affordable setup. On the right, there is the same setup with slight variations on details, making the items more elegant. The red tags on these show two and three $ indicating that it is more expensive. Below the left section, text reads in quotation marks "regular lighting." The text below the right section reads in quotation marks "lighting design."

“What do you do for a living?” inquired my seat mate on a recent flight. “I am a lighting designer,” I replied. [BLANK STARE] Explaining my job is, well, difficult at best. If people have any awareness of lighting design, it likely falls into the sentiments displayed in the image above. Our lighting plans, so […]

THINK LIGHT: Color Temperature

An illustration of a camera recording a lightbulb on a monitor. The lightbulb is yellow, but is depicted as green on the monitor. Text below reads "Why Choosing Color Temperature is Hard"

A few years ago I wrote a pulp piece for Houzz.com on how to choose the “right” color temperature of light. At the time there were just a few choices homeowners faced with lighting: choose 2700°K warm white, 3000°K not-quite-as-warm light, or perhaps 3500°K “neutral” white or 4000°K cool light. I recommended 2700°K for traditional […]

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