My background is in graphic design and I consider myself to be an artistic individual with an eye for color and an appreciation for all things “designery”, but I have to admit that I had a very basic appreciation/understanding when it came to lighting design. I knew what I liked when it came to restaurant or retail or hospitality lighting and what I didn’t like, but I never really put much thought into my everyday experience and how light affected me.
Since joining The Lighting Practice a year ago I have experienced two major life events. I married an amazing man and I promptly purchased a home with him. These two events made me realize how much more aware I am of light and its effect on a space. As it turned out light was one of the major deciding factors for my husband and my choice in a wedding venue and future home – natural daylight to be specific.
The Wedding Venue
The venue we chose for our wedding has huge windows allowing daylight to pour into the space casting the surroundings and ourselves in fresh, clean light. We absolutely loved this quality (the huge ceilings, hard wood floors, and exposed brick also helped set the mood). We also loved the iron staircase in the back of the space which would allow us to have an elevated ceremony with a bit of visual drama. The problem, the windows were completely blocked from this area by architectural features thus diminishing the wonderful daylight we were so excited about. Our only solution was to rotate an existing gobo mounted to a track in the ceiling so that it would highlight the stair landing for our ceremony. While this solution would add additional light it would also create extreme shadows. The solution (thanks to TLP Designers) add backlighting with a streamline wall washer placed on the floor. The effect was fantastic! Not only did it eliminate distracting shadows from our ceremony it also enhanced the texture of the brick wall and created an overall glowing effect around our wedding party. Lighting (and my TLP coworkers) saved the day!
Our Home
Many of the details that attracted us to our wedding venue also attracted us to our new home. We were once again won-over by natural daylight. Our new home has windows on three sides of the house, other features include hardwood floors and an exposed brick wall. The space is fantastic! Even though we planned to bask in natural light by day we would eventually need additional lighting to supplement/replace when day transitioned into night. To my dismay our first evening in the house revealed some very inconsistent lighting temperatures! The lighting changed from room to room! One light source would cast the space in a “warm” light and then the next cast the space in “cool” light. The previous owner was obviously not a lighting designer! This inconsistency was visually distracting and would probably bother a large majority of individuals. What made this a telling experience for me was that I realized how emotionally and physically tuned into light I had become. The solution is obvious, replace the light bulbs lamps (thank you for the vocabulary lesson TLP Team) and create a consistent color temperature and a healthy mood in our home.
Light is powerful and I am happy to have the privilege to work with creative individuals that not only understand the design aspect of light, but also the scientific interplay.
