Inspired by Light

A design guide to transforming the home

Sally Storey

• Publisher: RIBA Publishing
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000222005
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Décoration d'intérieur

Lighting has undergone a revolution in recent years, with new tools and technologies at our disposal: never before have there been so many options to achieve the transformative effects of light. Yet all too often, lighting – which does not just enable functionality, but also mood, aesthetics and flow – is misunderstood, or plain badly done. With so many options available, it's also all too easy to make mistakes; and with new technologies such as LEDs lasting a long time, these mistakes can be expensive.

Offering practical insight and visual inspiration on successful lighting solutions and schemes, this is the most accessible lighting design guide, offering a toolbox of techniques to apply in practice. Written by one of the UK's leading lighting designers on both commercial and residential projects, it features a variety of real-world projects – large and small, old and new, interior and exterior, UK and global.

INTRODUCTION

The creative and technical art of lighting design may be relatively new, but appreciating light is as old as human existence. The play of sunlight on everything around us is a daily inspiration. Dappled sunlight through rippling leaves, rays glinting off raindrops, long shadows on a late afternoon, warming bright beams across polished floorboards - natural light affects our mood and visual appreciation of our surroundings. Modern lighting design re-creates drama in our living spaces, highlighting and illuminating and using a combination of light and shadow to enhance the architecture and appeal of our homes.

Theatre directors have long understood the potential for light to create atmosphere and engage an audience. Powerful combinations of light and shadow, tone and colour help create the mood for each set, directing our attention and playing with our expectations and emotions. This same appreciation and understanding can be applied to lighting architecture - traditional or contemporary - creating a dialogue between space and light, allowing an interior to be revealed or concealed as the day progresses. In our homes, we are the audience to our lighting design. Lighting designers make the theatre of light work both practically and aesthetically.

For centuries, ambience in interiors was created by the use of layered light - oil lamps or candles, torcheres on walls and firelight in the hearth. From the 19th century, gaslight created pools of atmospheric light in our streets and homes. The arrival of the tungsten filament bulb in the 1920s removed the subtlety of these layered sources. A tungsten pendant in the centre of the room often became the single light source, providing easy inexpensive and clean light. Flooding rooms with this even light came at a cost to ambience. The adoption of early energy-efficient tubular fluorescent lamps, with their flat, cold light, killed any remaining layered atmosphere in the home.

Figure 0.1 Shadows are as essential an element of lighting design as natural light. The screening on the window filters natural light; as the day progresses, so the shadows change.

The drive for energy efficiency was commendable, but the lighting was harsh, would flicker and was difficult to dim. The tide turned with the arrival of the tungsten halogen lamp in the late 1970s. At last, lighting designers had a miniature accent tool: the size of a halogen capsule was smaller than traditional tungsten sources. This allowed a smaller reflector to control the light, and a more subtle approach everywhere, from homes to hotels, restaurants and museums. Downlights and spotlights proliferated.

A leap forward for energy efficiency came in the 1990s with the white LED (light-emitting diode) light source. It gradually replaced tungsten halogen reflector lamps and ended the compact tungsten filament source of the traditional bulb. Unfortunately, these first LED light sources offered only a cool colour temperature with poor colour rendition. LED technology has now caught up, to provide a better spectrum of colour and light quality, and lenses to direct light. Today, these LEDs are the light source of choice, offering wonderful scope for lighting designers.

Think of a favourite south-facing room on a late summer's afternoon: light pooling on the floor, shadows coming and going, diffuse sunlight filtering through windows. The south-facing room has energy, whereas east-facing rooms, after morning and without artificial light, are shrouded in gloom. You will avoid them if you can, waiting until the following morning, when a new day brings warmth and light into these rooms. Few of us now rise with the sun and rest from dusk. However, we still reference the position of the sun throughout the day, knowing at an elemental level where we are in the diurnal round, and how its light and shade affect our surroundings and shape our emotions. Successful lighting creates homes which people can enjoy after daylight fades.

Our workplaces are lit at a cool light temperature, with a bright, uniform ambient level and little contrast. Conversely, we want our homes to have a more relaxed style. Lighting designers visualise how houses transition from dawn to dusk, supplementing and accenting through the day, until artificial light takes over entirely.

An architect, when designing a house, will visualise a project in three dimensions from the outset. The design will flow from the shape and structure of the space, the choice of materials and the role of natural light. The architect will consider natural light from windows, doors, skylights, apertures, glass walls and ceilings, which will in turn shape the visual appearance of the house, internally and externally.

Intelligent and creative lighting design reinforces the architect's intent. Light can be applied to emphasise volume, highlight interesting structures and assist with flow through a building. It can be manipulated to create balance between disparate spaces, to differentiate between materials and to create drama. The play and control of light colour and the amount of emphasis and focus created influence mood within a space. It is a collaborative effort to deliver the vision of the architect and interior designer. This book illustrates how inspiring lighting design is achieved, and how light can enhance the architect's and interior designer's vision to make a building work better, be more pleasurable to inhabit and more beautiful.

An architect plays with volumes and materials, an interior designer with finishes and texture, a lighting designer with layers of light to enhance the design of the architect and interior designer. We have many options in our artificial lighting toolbox for building up layers of light, to create beautifully lit spaces and intangible benefits of wellbeing and emotions of calm or excitement. We provide task lighting for reading, cooking or working at a desk. We consider flow and overall feel, allowing all areas of a house to be enjoyed in different ways at different times of

Figure 0.2a Figure 0.2b Figure 0.2cThe same bathroom, pictured in the morning (a), afternoon, with light from the west filtering through shutters (b), and evening (c).

day or night, Lighting should add an extra dimension to make the very best of the space, creating depth and height, inviting corners, bright areas and sometimes shadows and contrasts, and focusing attention on important features. It's about the balance of light and shade and bringing new energy to an interior. Like architects, lighting designers consider the entire house inside and out.

Part 1 of this book discusses the three main elements of lighting: ambient, task and accent, and how these must be considered and balanced in each room and connecting area. Lighting solutions may be repeated in rooms, but the interpretation of the lit space will alter; understanding the effects is the skill. Knowing how many millimetres from the wall a linear LED should sit, and how to conceal it, how to diffuse it and how to balance it with other lighting is all part of the job of the lighting designer. Part 2 illustrates solutions for all types of homes to give architects, interior designers and homeowners ideas and inspiration for their projects. I have illustrated key lighting techniques which work well in different parts of a home. The main rooms are covered but entire books could be written on specialist subjects like lighting art and joinery, which are just touched upon here. In Part 3,1 have chosen a selection of beautiful houses with different architectural styles to illustrate a range of lighting design techniques and approaches. Each case study walks the reader through the home, illustrating how a lighting theme works in a single residence, how it complements the architecture and enhances the building and decor.

The joy of my job as a lighting designer is to be continually inspired. Each new space presents its own wonder, challenges and excitement I hope that some of these ideas in different spaces will also uplift you. My aim is to inspire, intrigue and illuminate.

PART 1 TECHNICLA ASPECTS OF LIGHTING

DOI: 10.4324/9781003108559-1

CHAPTER 1 HOW LIGHTING CAN SUPPORT THE ARCHITECTURAL SCHEME

DOI: 10.4324/9781003108559-2

Good lighting does not steal the show - it makes heroes of architecture and interiors. It changes the environment we inhabit and determines how we perceive space. Playing with light changes the character, look and mood of a room. Doing it well is an art.

EARLY INTEGRATION OF THE LIGHTING SCHEME

Figure 1.1The stone wall in the rear is lit by multiple sources, with narrow beams top and bottom. This is achieved with individual sources but can also be arranged in a linear profile with special optics. In contrast, a diffused linear LED is concealed under the counter and gives a very soft, even light onto the stools.

Commissioning a lighting designer at concept stage, when the architect or interior designer has developed first plans w...