52 Lighting
The use of light to illuminate and enhance the experience of an interior space.
The Illuminating Engineering Society (www.ies.org) publishes the Lighting Library, a subscription source that provides access to lighting science, practice, and applications, as well as measurements and testing.
Foot Candle
A somewhat archaic metric, a foot candle refers to the amount of light that hits an adjacent surface, and is measured by the standard of one lumen of light at a one-foot (25 cm) distance.
Lumen
The unit of measure that describes the luminous flux or useful light emitted by a source of light.
Color Temperature
The measurement in kelvins of how warm (yellow) or cool (blue) the hue of a light source is.
Lighting is essential to the experience of a space. Illumination sets a mood, makes tasks easier to perform, and make spaces more accessible. Interior designers use light fixtures of all types—ceiling, pendant, floor, uplights, and feature lights—to address specific purposes and needs.
The design of a lighting system, which can be broken down into ambient, task, and accent lighting, is an expertise that occasionally warrants the use of a professional light designer. However in most cases, lighting solutions can be developed by the designer through light simulations, and by referencing the recommendations of the various professional organizations that provide rules of thumb to follow.
Advanced light simulations allow for the designer to check a desired lighting effect prior to finalizing plans and documents, and many technologies exist for controlling and programming light based on time of day and desired scenes.
A corridor at FC Barcelona’s Camp Nou is washed with high-intensity color.
Designed by Stephan Braunfels, the café in the Paul Löbe House in Berlin, Germany uses multiple colored-glass light fixtures to animate the ceiling plane.
Interior designers can choose from these different types of lighting to create the lighting plan of a space
General Illumination
The amount of ambient light in a space.
Downlighting
Specific task and work plane illumination.
Uplighting
Highlights elements from below; can be moved if a standing floor lamp.
Backlighting
Used to create luminous surfaces and enhance the sense of depth in a space.
Feature Lighting
Specific light on an object or work of art.
Accent Lighting
Similar to feature lighting; used to illuminate the path or circulation through a space.
