Design Theory Archives - Page 8 of 11

Top Ten Reasons to Hire a Lighting Designer

A photograph of a very white kitchen with white cabinetry, white walls, white appliances, and a white ceiling. Handdrawn arrows by some circle lights in the ceiling indicate "light for feeling" and "light for doing"

Disclaimer: I am a lighting designer. I want you to hire me (or a lighting designer like me) because I need to eat. But I am not writing this article to get more work. I just want you to think about light and lighting differently. There are two schools of thought on why you might hire […]

Lighting Lies

A photograph of a modern-looking wall sconce attached to a mirror to reflect light out into the room it's in.

I was thumbing through the latest issue of This Old House last night and stopped cold at a beautiful advertisement for a lighting company. “Good Lighting is Everything,” it said. That may be a stretch, but I’ll take it. And then I got just a bit angry (with apologies to my wife for the outburst) […]

Vinyl SLighting

A graphic illustration of the Fallingwater house by architect Frank Lloyd Wright.

The locally quarried stone and stained concrete shapes that make up Frank Lloyd Wright’s iconic Fallingwater are key ingredients of its success, but the maintenance is expensive. Natural stone needs care and mortar; concrete cracks and spalls. So last year the Foundation that oversees Fallingwater made the sensible choice to reduce maintenance costs. They covered the house in […]

Lighting Larceny

Crime Scene Do Not Cross yellow tape over a blurred out background of brown grass

COMMON MISTAKES THAT STEAL YOUR COMFORT AND JOY They are all around us, lurking in our homes and threatening to harm us every day and every night! Be very afraid! Stay tuned for updates! Oh no! I like to think of myself as the Evangelist of Light, spreading the good news that light- the first […]

The Electrical Walk Through

A bedroom in a house in the process of being built, no drywall up yet. Sun is pouring in the window at the back. Sketches over the photo imagine where furniture, lights and art will be placed once the room is finished

Sadly, my latest article on Houzz.com received about 10,000 views in the first week. Why is this sad? Because way more people need to prepare for their electrical walk-through, when most residential lighting “design” is done with a Sharpie and the “you need about four cans here” approach. Make it 10,001 by reading the article […]

Mix & Match Lighting

A wide hallway in a resort hotel with windows and potted palms on the left and doorways on the right, with four chandeliers at intervals

I live by the rules. But am I wrong? One of those rules is to never mix warm white bulbs (yellowish) with cool white bulbs (bluish). I learned this rule back in the fluorescent day by looking at ceilings where some bulbs were pink and some were blue and the end result is that the […]

Lighting isn’t brain surgery…?

A diagram of an eye on the left and a brain on the right

I frequently hear myself saying that lighting is not brain surgery, that getting it right just requires the attention of a dedicated experienced professional. I might be wrong. (Not literally. I could never do brain surgery because I would pass out as soon as the knife dug in. I’m getting faint just thinking about it. […]

Change is the Only Constant

Middle school aged kids walking into an empy lunch room with large windows on the right and tables to the left. There is a stair way with a mural behind it in the middle of the room.

I am as guilty as the next lighting designer. See my design above for proof. Once upon a time, light indoors depended on light through windows or flames from candles, lamps and fires. The windows were automatically scheduled to turn on slowly in the morning and turn off slowly in the evening. They changed intensity […]

Does it cost more?

An industrial ceiling with red lamps hanging down at intervals

One of the reasons that light in our homes and workplaces is not good for us is that our primary considerations are 1) how cheaply can we get lighting and 2) how few watts can we use. I am often asked “will good lighting cost more than regular lighting?” Yep. Let’s say you hire a […]

Rainbow Red Velvet

An illustration of a person holding a prism with light going in and a rainbow emerging with these words on each of the colors: Change easier, Focus clearly, Feel better, Know more, Do better

The Gift of Light must be fully unwrapped to be understood. Inside the gift box of white light are all the colors of the rainbow, only visible when we split the wavelengths apart with a prism or raindrops. The power of light is also multi-layered, affecting our lives in many ways. My approach to better […]

Category: Design Theory