How a welI-designed lighting plan creates exciting emotional fulfillment in your home!
Lighting is a very expressive medium. It enhances the mood of a room, and in many cases it has a dominating influence in creating that mood. By varying the lighting effect, the expression of any room can be altered at will. This is a preeminent property unequaled by furnishings and decorative schemes. A well-designed lighting plan enables you to accomplish all this and more.
Proper lighting models sculpture and furniture, it also breathes life into the inanimate pigments of paintings, and gives the proper expression to the work of the designer.
Unfortunately, most people, including salespeople, builders, and architects do not have much knowledge of the allure and expressiveness of light. They don’t seem to understand that lighting effects are the important results, and that light is a wonderful medium to be handled in a manner similar to that in which the artist handles his media.
Lighting when properly done, is an artistic and a psychological medium. It has great potential to affect the aesthetics of the room as well as the emotions of the occupants.
A common practice in lighting stores is the concentration of attention on the lighting fixtures. Many fixtures are aimless from the viewpoint of lighting. Many of them are merely objects … sometimes beautiful objects, fabricated from metal, glass, and other materials. The fixture dealer or salesperson usually sells them without consideration for the lighting effects of the particular room for which they are intended. Salespeople don’t often discuss lighting effects due to lack of knowledge or they fail to demonstrate the lighting effects of what they are showing to the customer.
Even the designer or decorator’s treatment of walls and furnishings depends upon reflected light, and therefore any real achievements are, in reality, lighting effects. But, the expressiveness of any decorative scheme is dependent upon light and the proper utilization of it.
Of course, fixtures are important and they need to be aesthetically pleasing, but it’s the lighting effect in the room as a whole, that is of prime importance; because it has a subtle and powerful psychological influence. This is where a good lighting plan comes in.
Many details and principles are involved in residential lighting, but there is one rule which must be emphasized again and again; and that is the lighting effect. The lighting effect, meaning the final effect on the expression or ambience of a room, is incredibly important.
The lighting fixtures are just a link in the chain and they are a means to an end. And that end is the total effect, emotion, and ambience of a room. Unfortunately, many times the total effect is defeated, due to the concentration of attention that is frequently placed on the lighting fixtures at themselves.
Most people, when it asked to appraise the lighting of any given room, immediately turn their attention to the lighting fixtures, instead of viewing the room has a whole. Therefore, they are unable to see or appraise the lighting effect, if there is any effect at all.
The appearance of objects depends upon the light.
It should be evident that well designed lighting is a powerful and vital factor in influencing the mood, ambience, and expression of a room. In fact, a designer’s work is effective only when illuminated properly. By flicking a switch, the expression of a room can be greatly altered in an instant. To accomplish a similar and dramatic change, the designer must re-decorate the room. Such is the power of lighting, when done correctly, with knowledge and skill.
Different rooms have different sensitivities to lighting, depending on reflectiveness of the large surfaces of each room, and the decorative scheme will always be influenced by the type of lighting that it has … whether it be good or bad.
Another vital aspect of lighting and it’s expressiveness, is the influence it has on the appearance of objects. We see solely by distinguishing differences in light, shade, in color. It’s the variation of these factors that models and paints an object or an interior.
A thorough grasp of lighting cannot be obtained without the painstaking study of light, shade, and color as related to objects; plus all of these objects; as related to the entire setting or environment.
An illustrated example is a painting. In the final analysis, the painting is merely a distribution of brightness and colors. The painter in essence, portrays or paints an expression of light upon his canvas, but even this is not fixed completely, because lighting itself can alter its appearance considerably. This is even more definite with sculpture and other three-dimensional objects. The portrait photographer can produce many expressions of the same human subject by varying the lighting. The sculptor models a form, but the lighting gives the form is final expression. These facts apply as well to ordinary objects in the home, as well as the creations of the painter and sculptor.
Nature changes her mood with the lighting so emphatically that any one should be convinced of the power of lighting. Light is definitely an expressive medium whose powers are constantly being demonstrated in nature’s outdoor scenes. By bringing these observations indoors, we find it a vast field of application. The effect of lighting upon objects, ornamentation, and furnishings as a whole, assumes a new importance.