Name: Bright Ideas: Mastering Architectural Lighting
Uploaded: 2025-05-29T12:31:02.000Z
Duration: 7 min 49 s
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Hi, I'm Luke Thomas, Design Director at John Cullen.

In this series, I'm looking forward to sharing with you my experiences from my career in luxury lighting and to inspire you with some techniques that will ensure and guarantee amazing lighting effects throughout the home.

We'll explore how designers use lighting to shape our emotional and visual experience of the spaces that we live in and enjoy.

Lighting is such a magical and intangible energy that illuminates our world.

When carefully used in contrast with shadow, it gives shape to objects, depth to materials and adds richness to colours.

With the right skill and experience, lighting can be used to change our perception of spaces, instantly making spaces feel bigger or brighter, creating the illusion of space or instantly adding intimacy.

I'd like to start by showing some examples of the power of light using this beautiful bas-relief by London-based studio DKT Artworks.

Let's look at four different lighting styles and see how it changes your perception of this piece.

Natural light in your home, whether direct or reflected light, is both ambient and diffused.

This creates quite a flat lighting effect.

Artificial lighting can be used to put more control into the hands of the designer.

Now let's look at a classic grid layout of downlights.

I feel it's still quite disappointing and the piece feels lifeless, it still lacks character.

So while artificial lighting can add value, it needs to be more considerate than this.

See how a directional focused beam of light immediately creates impact.

The artwork really pops off the wall and you can see that there's now a clear and intentional play between light and shadow, providing definition to the wonderful release.

This is a technique that you'll see employed in museums and theatres where the light is concealed from view and focused onto a certain feature, with other areas left in darkness.

Here you can see a discrete surface spotlight creating the magic, but that's very much taking the back seat to the star of the show.

The artwork looks and feels so fundamentally different.

The light is now projected from below, which is visually intriguing to the eye, as we're so used to light coming from above.

The source of light is a linear wall grazer set close to the base of the artwork, so the lighting effect skims up over the surface.

This really uses the light and shadow interaction to create depth, drama, and an incredible wow factor.

I think this is the perfect example of how lighting can be used to control our experiences.

Here we've seen how lighting can be used to enhance the experience.

But what happens if lighting is not a properly considered element of the interior and architectural designs?

The result is this, back to our grid of downlights.

Lighting can be difficult to comprehend, and understandably, it's easier to give focus to some of the other physical elements of a project, such as the kitchen, joinery, or  But master this versatile tool, and you'll bring your projects to a whole new level of comfort and sophistication.

So far, we've seen the basics of the power of light to transform a single piece of artwork.

But let's look at some of the key principles that we apply across the home to get the perfect results.

Firstly, please, no more grids of downlights on the ceiling.

As we've just seen, the grid layout produces a very flat and lightless effect.

Everything is lit with the same intensity.

To provide visually stimulating lighting effects, we need a carefully considered balance of light and shadow.

It's this variation of intensity that adds dynamism to any space.

So if you don't have a grid of downlights, what do you do instead?

It might seem daunting, but it's actually very simple.

Rather than just using downlights to illuminate a room, or a pendant, or lamps, use a combination of each of these.

It's typically a balance between ambient, task, and accent lighting that's going to hit the spot.

This layered approach gives a better aesthetic result, also allowing flexibility to switch between different moods and functions.

As we enter a space, the eye is naturally drawn to the brightest point.

You can take advantage of this involuntary response and use the power of light to control what is seen.

Think, what are the most important features in your space?

This is where you should be creating the most intense illumination.

The most challenging aspect of a lighting design can often be deciding what not to light.

By lighting too many features, you're at risk of having a washed out effect.

So now you consider shadow as much as we do light.

That balance between light and shadow is what gives shape and texture to objects, and also provides drama.

As we've discussed, our eyes see the brightest thing first, so you must ensure that sources of light are well concealed.

For example, if you were lighting a shelving unit, and you can see here, the light position in the underside of the shelf is always visible.

With the light being the brightest part of the unit, it's what you notice and you focus on.

But shouldn't you be focusing on items displayed on the shelves instead?

Now you can see how, with lighting concealed, our focus shifts to the objects on the shelves.

Concealing light is what a lighting designer spends a lot of their time doing, and it usually requires close coordination with the architect, builder, and joinery workshop.

Crucial to a successful outcome is to ensure luminaires are selected with care.

Not all downlights and uplights are equal.

What you're looking for is a light source which is baffled, i.e. recessed into the product.

If the source of light is flush on the ceiling or floor, it's likely to be very glary.

And it's the same case for a decorative light.

You want to ensure the source of light is shielded from view to maximise the visual comfort.

If the electrical contractor is already asking for lighting layouts, you've left it a bit late.

You can start planning your lighting as soon as you have an idea of the furniture arrangements and some idea of the finishes that will be used.

This ensures you get lights where you want them and reduces costly mistakes.

The arrival of LED brought opportunities for different colour temperatures in light.

White light, and even warm white and cool white, are very, very broad terms, with different companies choosing different kelvins for each.

For a residential environment, a warm white colour between 2200 and 2700 kelvins is usually the most appropriate.

It will give you a luxurious feel and works well with our human response to lighting and its impact on our circadian rhythm.

But beware, warm white is not specific enough to ensure a consistent colour between different suppliers.

Whilst it's preferable to maintain the same colour temperature between similar lights, for example, across your range of downlights, it is acceptable and often desirable to mix colour temperatures.

If it's done in a methodical way, it can help offer a variety of lighting scenes and moods.

So we've covered a few key principles to consider when you start your lighting journey, but we've really just scratched the surface.

There's so much more that you can explore.

We will use the next episodes in this series to focus on some key elements of lighting design and analyse them in more detail.

In the meantime, we're keen to hear from you.

If you would like to explore the themes that we've covered in this episode in more detail, visit the events section of our website where you'll see details of our CPD and webinar programme.

Finally, if you're interested in any of the lighting equipment that we've used within this episode, please see all the relevant links in the description below.

Thanks so much for watching and we hope to see you again soon.