Giving Thanks During the 2018 Holiday Season

We are professional lighting designers and lighting nerds. Whether we fell into this position, or chose it as a career, we are grateful for the opportunity to express our creative lighting vision on so many diverse projects. We collaborate as a team, contributing our lighting design knowledge and experience to help achieve the desired end result of any design project. Whether the lighting design project be residential, commercial, hospitality, exterior, specialty, or anything in between, seeing the conceptual vision come to life brings an unparalleled level of satisfaction and pride knowing we were a part of something special. We find joy in knowing that what we contribute to any project will help enhance the enjoyment of it.

Although it may seem like an easy task, providing professional lighting design services requires the perfect balance of creative vision, engineering, psychology of perception, technological knowledge, and respect for project specific requirements including budget, target market, and the overall expected ambiance people should experience when seeing the completed project. In a rapidly progressive field where technology is advancing on regular basis to meet aesthetic and energy expectations, we need to be experienced in implementing appropriate lighting design concepts, while continuously studying and understanding how to adapt the latest lighting technology into our lighting designs. Professional lighting design is often considered one of the most undervalued services of any project team, however the end results of any lighting design can be the difference between a successful project and one that just missed the mark.

Light and lighting design surrounds us every day, all day, both naturally and artificially whether we realize it or not. Typically, only the uncomfortable aspects of light and the effects of lighting design stand out and are noticed in projects. A few examples are fixtures that are glary, having too much or too little light in a space, uncomfortable light color temperatures, brightness ratios, color rendering, and the overall perception of the ambiance and finishes created by the lighting design and lighting fixtures. On the other end of the spectrum, a successful lighting design often times goes unnoticed, and is rarely singled out as it blends naturally into the overall ambiance of the finished project. Although it can be a very humbling profession, we pride ourselves as professional lighting designers in being able to provide solutions that are may go unrecognized, and we love having the opportunity to do so.

We consider ourselves students for life, constantly absorbing everything we see everywhere we go, both good and bad, as it relates to overall ambiance and the effects of lighting and lighting design. We look up, down, and all around to fully experience our surroundings, analyzing how it makes us feel, connecting to the emotions triggered within us to the effects of the lighting and ambiance we experience, and why. We are all driven by light, and continuously strive to express our passion for it in every project we work on, progressively implementing our knowledge and experience into the final product.

Today we give thanks for being professional lighting designers, and over the next few months we look forward to sharing more about what drives our passion through our Lighting Nerds section on our Thoughts page.

Happy Holidays from the LS crew!