Home Improvement Guide

Professional interior designers are expertly trained in the use of lighting features to create breathtaking results. In this four-part series which I call “Colour Me Brightly: Understanding Light in Interior Design,” I draw on my experience in London’s interior design community to explain this fascinating subject. This third article talks about how to create patterns using opaque materials.

The second way for an interior designer to create light-based patterns involves opaque surfaces, which reflect light back into a room. This pattern creation process is more sophisticated and can be fine-tuned for stunning interior design effects. Light portrayals impact how we understand a surface and its texture. For example, the “standard” technique often seen in London residences simply involves casting a gentle play of light across a wall. The light brushes the fittings, causing the wall to appear even, flat and two-dimensional. Some top London Interior Designers know that their clients crave more drama and stylistic nuance. In such cases, placing lightwell fillings very close to the wall and angling them downwards can be really striking. Using this technique, interior design consultancies can transform the previous gentle wave into an enunciated designer style, as the photons shave the surface and build to form sturdy optical patterns, including top-level arcs and dramatic textures. A sharper, more laser-like focus will only make the pattern more conspicuous – recreating a look that is popular in many trendy London nightclubs.

The direct counterpoint to this interior design technique involves the use of close-offset uplighting. With this approach, floor-level filaments cause the eye to move up vertical columns of light which dance across the wall to form puddles of dappled reflected light on the ceiling. Professional London interior designers often work alongside colour consultants to make sure that the result has practical relevance as well as aesthetic appeal. In particular, some newer London residences often have uncomfortably low ceilings. Interior designers can use this lighting approach to draw attention to the vertical plane of the wall, thereby counterbalancing the hemmed-in feel of the low ceiling.

In the next and final article in this series called “Colour Me Brightly!” I will finish by revealing some top lighting tips from London’s interior design community.

Interior design consultancies understand light in all its forms. In London, lighting is crucial to interior design consultancies that need to create stunning results. In this, the eighth and final article in my series which I call “DeLIGHTed by Design,” I continue to draw on my experience working with some of London’s Top Interior Deign Consultancies to explain this exciting area.

When most schoolchildren are asked to think of the countryside, they often imagine the hot, shimmering flicker of a bonfire on a crisp autumn evening or the comforting flare of a scented candle. But how is an interior design consultancy to re-interpret these fabulously earthy and atmospheric scenes for, say, an elegant central London flat? The answer is artificial light.

Interior design consultancies recognise that artificial light is available in many different shades. It is similar to the situation with paint, where buckets that are labelled “white” can actually contain a multitude of different tones. Interior design consultancies employ colour professionals who know that the cool white light of an energy-efficient bulb creates an entirely different effect from the warm yellow-orange tones of a tungsten filament. In London, low-voltage halogen options are often used in darker flats where there is a need to add light during the daytime. Interior design consultancies will install dimmer switches that allow homeowners to reduce the brightness of halogens at night, causing them to adopt a more husky yellow-red glow that is akin to an ancient lantern or oil lamp. By contrast, lamplight is too yellow for most interior design consultancies to include for daytime use, and indeed it can lead to sleepiness or lethargy at work (one of the reasons it is almost never seen in London offices). But at night, tungsten lamps become much more warm and welcoming.

Some interior design consultancies have a love-hate relationship with fluorescent lighting options. These fixtures often emit various shades of white, ranging from a very cool, almost daylight tone, which can be quite crisp, to a warm, rosy streetlight glow. Some interior design consultancies love fluorescent lights for London kitchens, where they illuminate workspaces but save on electricity bills. However, other interior design consultancies stay well away from fluorescent options because their colour does not change as they are dimmed. Fluorescents merely become less bright under such conditions, which can contribute to an unattractively dull, and almost grey, lighting effect.

That brings me to the end of my series “DeLIGHTed by Design.” Thank you for letting me share with you about how London interior design consultancies create fabulous lighting schemes!