Lighting in modern design

Press, 10 April 1980, Page 12

Lighting in modern design

A century after the invention of the electric light, artificial lighting has grown into one of the most dramatic, important, and flexible elements in modern design.

It is also the element that causes the most confusion — even to people who usually take technical design sophistication in stride.

Today’s artificial light can alter shape and colour, enhance or distort, dramatize or minimise, increase working efficiency, and form its own subtly changing decoration. Yet most of us still think of lighting in terms of actual fixtures — globes and shades — rather than the effects or moods that can be conjured from those fixtures.

It is much easier to work with lighting once you understand that there are three basic types: general or background, light; local, or task, light; and accent, or decorative, light. Ideally, every room should have a combination of at least two of these types; in the case of living rooms, all three. All types of lighting can be subtly modulated with dimmer switches, which can be installed with or instead nf ordinary light switches. General, ir background, lighting maintains a low level to bounce light off an area. It permits easy, safe movement and provides a framework that will make task lighting both more helpful and more interesting.

Background lighting is usually supplied by ceiling fixtures; lighted valances; cove, cornice, or wall lighting; recessed fixtures in either ceilings or floors; or a grouping of at least

three portable lights (such as uplights) set in judicious locations at floor level to bounce light of ceilings and walls. Local, or task, lighting provides the right level of illumination for specific activities — reading and writing, cooking, dining or making up and shaving. It also creates interesting pools of light. In living areas, task lighting is usually provided by table, desk or floor lamps. In kitchens and laundry rooms it is provided by such fixtures as incandescent or fluorescent strip lights and spots. Bulbs around a mirror, as in a theatre dressing room, or downlights over baths and basins supply task lighting in bathrooms.

Accent, or decorative, lighting creates focal points; emphasises paintings, objects and possessions that you want to how off; and adds interesting personal or idiosyncratic touches to a room.

For this kind of highlighting use spots, wallwashers, pinhole or framing projectors, uplights, or even tiny Christmas-tree lights and candles. Fixtures are the bare bones of lighting. Regulated and positioned sensitively, they alter the size and mood of a room in quite extraordinary ways. Keep in mind that light itself is invisible — you do not see light but rather reflections from lighted surfaces. A surface is “dark” if it absorbs light and “light” if it reflects light.

Dark room surfaces, particularly walls, seem to drop away and lose importance so that the objects and people in the space become more important. This effect is

dramatic but sometimes creates a sense of tension. Conversely, very light or all-white rooms make people feel insignificant and disoriented. Unless you have a particular reason for wanting a very dark or very light room, try to make room surfaces reflect light in such a way that relative brightnesses correspond to sky, landscape, and earth —• with the ceiling the brightest area, the walls less so, and the floor the least of all. Because it is natural, we are comfortable with this sort of balance.

If you want to emphasise a particular room rather than the people and objects in it, exaggerate and expand its apparent size by projecting extra brightness onto the walls. This is best done with w a 11-washers recessed into the ceiling, surfacemounted, or mounted on tracks; however, the latter two never manage to light the wall as evenly as the more sophisticated stationary equipment. Surface and trackmounted fixtures do not throw light as far down the wall or spread it as widely as do recessed wall-washers, so they may result in “hot spots,” or areas of uneven brightness.

However, careful aiming of the fixtures usually overcomes the worst of these problems, and it is much easier to mount lights on tracks than to recess or ceiling-mount them. Recessed fixtures or tracks are effective for creating focal points of light, but uplights and wall-washers set on the floor will do just as well. They give a soft but

dramatic effect, and if, for example, you put small square or rectangular uplights on the floor between seating units and the wall, the furniture will appear to be gently surrounded by light. Emphasise textural interest in walls, curtains or wall hangings by grazing the walls or fabr.c with light from recessed ‘‘h i g h-hat” downlights inset about 15cm to 20cm out from the junction of wall and ceiling. Another way to emphasise the texture of walls is to install cornice or cove lighting by fitting incandescent or fluorescent tubes behind a specially made baffle that runs around the walls or above bookshelves.

Curtains can be emphaised with valence lighting. Another method for much the same effect is to use uplights set just bacK from walls or curtains. Uplight on curtains tends to make a room seem both

more informal and more spacious, whereas downlight highlights the fabric and makes it look richer. The easiest way to light an entire wall smoothly is to install a number of single lamp holders on a track, about 0.3 m apart and about the same dist tance from the wall. Set them vertically, aimed downward. Do not tilt them toward the wall; try to reach the bottom of the area and the top will x ake care of itself. For an average 2.4 m to 2.7 m ceiling height, use 50-watt bulbs, which can be either left exposed or concealed behind a valence of some sort.

Light can also enhance, decorate and accent walls. Create luminous walls and panels by fastening fluorescent tubes or strips of small incandescent bulbs to the wall, stretching translucent material on a frame, and .placing the frame over the fixtures so that the light glows through. Use a dimmer to control intensity. Project moving patterns and images onto vertical surfaces by beaming light from projectors or spotlights through rotating

wheels of coloured lenses. You can shine spots through any chosen object to cast interesting shadows or fit coloured filters over bulbs to change the mood and feeling of a room.

A dramatic lighting method for plain walls is to install recessed high-hat downlights about Im out from the wall and about 0.6 m to Im apart to produce a pattern of scalloped light and shade. Use 1 5 0-w a 11 reflector floodlights. Adjustable downlights aimed straight down and fitted with reflector floodlights of a lesser wattage also have a dramatic effect. Use a neutral-col-oured carpet or floor covering, and install a dimmer switch to allow for interesting changes in light level. Above all, avoid placing these types of lights directly above seating areas, or your guests will .feel they are in an interrogation chamber — presumably the opposite of the effect you want. For the most comfortable light, use one 75-watt reflector floodlight for every 2.3 sq. m. of space.