Lighting Elements

To establish how artificial and natural light sources will work together in a room, homeowners first need to figure out how the space will be used. Although lighting has the power to add drama, it has to function above all else. “I ask a lot of questions about what the house is going to look like,” Sheldon says. Such queries often address furniture colors and placement, as well as surfaces such as flooring and countertops. But more so, they focus on the homeowners’ life-styles. For example, does the family entertain often? If so, is it formal or casual? Where will the children do their homework?

Sometimes, the space has more than one function. The kitchen is a prime example. “Lighting in the kitchen needs to work on a variety of levels,” says David Heide, principal of David Heide Design Studio, a Minneapolis-based architecture and interior design firm. “One must consider everything from the mid-winter dinner party preparation, where we need brightly and evenly lit task areas, to that warm and welcoming nightlight that stays on after the family meal is cleared and everyone is in another part of the house watching TV.”

One of the best ways to control the layers of light in any space is with dimmers. “Dimming is essential to vary the mood in the space,” says Mark Frank, a lighting designer and owner of Emphasis Lighting Group, a Cambridge-based lighting design firm. “You need to be able to make the room bright enough to clean it, but when you’re entertaining you may want significantly lower light levels.”

Fixtures play an important role in tying together the aesthetics of lighting design. “It’s often said that hardware is the jewelry of architecture, and I think that statement can be extended to lighting as well,” Heide says. “They’re the decorative ornament in lighting.”

A couple decades ago, the majority of lighting fixtures were in a brass finish. Now, sconces, lamps, chandeliers, and pendants look like elaborate works of art. “We see everything from shiny silver to brown to gray to black to iron and right back to brass again,” Sheldon says. “We’re to the point where none of the finishes are bad; it’s just how we pull it all together.”

Homeowners need to ensure lighting elements are working together in the overall scheme. “Decorative fixtures are half of the picture of really good lighting design,” Frank says. “Although you may have a chandelier over the dining room table, what really makes the lighting extraordinary are the pieces you put with it, such as specific accent lights.”