What is a Lighting Designer?
A lighting designer is looking at their projects completely from an ‘electrical lighting’ point of view. We learn how to light, what to light. A Lighting Designer creates an atmosphere and mood while providing all the basics of task, ambient, and accent lighting, through layers and controls.
I want to share a quote with you:
“Lighting design is the creative process for developing lighting solutions for the safe, productive, and enjoyable use of the built environment. In the past, there has been an overwhelming emphasis on assuring that an appropriate quantity of light is delivered to the task or work surface. Quality of light has been considered mainly in the limited sense of controlling direct glare from luminaires or reflected glare from surfaces and objects. However, lighting design extends far beyond these factors. Light is one of the tools used to shape our environment, visually and emotionally. Lighting design is a synthesis of light and shadow, color, form, space, rhythm, texture, and proportion, achieved through an understanding of the technology necessary to produce these effects. Working with these elements is what distinguishes the work of the lighting designer from that of the artist, from whom the lighting designer draws inspiration, and from that of the engineer, from whom the designer learns practical problem solving.
Part of the appeal of designing with light is its illusive nature: its effect can be almost palpable and may be visually arresting, yet the rays of light themselves are usually invisible. When designers or users talk of “light,” they often mean the effect of light on a surface or object: highlight and shadow, soft gradations of light, or the sharp definition that comes with focused point sources. Light reveals form: wall planes, three-dimensional space, architectural details, furnishings, sculpture, the branching structure of trees. Light can enhance or diminish elements of the built environment and also the natural environment.
Light profoundly affects our feelings of well-being, awe and wonder, mood, comfort, and motivation. It influences how we perceive all the other elements. Light patterns evoke psychological responses such as “bright,” “dim,” “magical,” “dull,” “mysterious,” “pleasant,” and “forbidding.”
Reprinted from The Lighting Design Process (DG-7-94) with permission from the Illuminating Engineering Society of North America.
I have a hard time finding the words to express what a lighting designer does better than this. Every time I read this it gives me goosebumps and re-emphasizes why I do what I do.
Lighting Design is a field and profession all on its own. We don’t do what others do; we just make what others do look better!
In 1935, Richard Kelly was one of the first proponents of Architectural Lighting Design, yet I still hear people say, “I didn’t even know lighting design was a thing!” It is! There are only about 3300 of us in the United States! I am proud to be one of them!