Design With Steve

Liquid Lighting Design: How to Light Your Space

Liquid Lighting Vibe

Written by

Steve Duncan, AIA

in

Introduction – Create a Liquid Vibe With Your Lighting Design

Create unforgettable designs for your clients. This guide breaks down how to create a liquid lighting design vibe for your project, through practical strategies for architects and interior designers. Let’s get started …

Architect who is designing

Table of Contents

 

Create a Liquid Lighting Design: Ripple Inspiration

Create a Feeling With Light: Ripple

VIBE: Magical, edgeless, mesmerizing.

LIGHTING STRATEGY: In this scheme, cool teal light is balanced with warm adjustable lights for dramatic effect. Sconces can be used to create a rippled light appearance. 

ROOM FINISHES: Walls and ceilings should be medium tones with a semi-gloss finish. 

Creating a Ripple Lighting Layout

Creating a Liquid Lighting Design Layout

Online dating, but for real estate…

You know how some people just string along the person their dating and it never goes anywhere? Well! That also happens in the design world, and there’s a special place in hell for developers who do this.

Alright, storytime. A contractor put me in touch with a developer in Orange County who wanted to maximize the buildable area for a single family home lot. After a couple months of feasibility analysis, design, and marketing renderings, the developer ghosted me and the contractor without payment. Its a lesson every designer has to learn (or better yet, learn from others so that they don’t make the same mistake).

There IS one great thing that came out of that experience… well, two good things. I now get deposits before I start to design ANYTHING, and today’s lighting vibe is brought to you by that developer.

For that project we were organizing the home around a central courtyard with a pool, and one of the concepts we were working with was playing off of this mesmerizing ripple of light that would come off of the pool, and this is an effect you can also create with electric lighting. Check it out! 💡 

And yeah, I’m totally over it. I’m fine. Don’t worry about me, really…

What to Look for in a Quality LED Light: Liquid Lighting Design Vibe

Regardless of the vibe you are going for, there are two things that can trip up designers when they are selecting LED lighting: ​

COLOR RENDERING INDEX (CRI)

If you only remember one thing from me, please remember that color rendering is EVERYTHING when it comes to lighting. If you love incandescent and halogen lights, but hate fluorescent, then color rendering is the reason.​

We always want to find lights that have a color rendering (CRI) of at least 90, so that we can bring out the true color of our room finishes and decor. Many LED lights have a color rendering of 80, and this score is actually worse than fluorescent (which has a score of 82). As you can see in the image below, the true color of the wood is brought out with the light on the right, which has a score of 90. The red tones of the wood come through and it feels warm. In contrast, the light on the left makes the wood look a bit greenish and yellow, because it has a poor color rendering score of 80.​

Trust me! It’s worth it to spend just a little bit more on lights to make sure that you’re getting LEDs with a score of 90 or higher, so that the people and finishes in your spaces feel vibrant and full of life. Make sure to pay attention to this when you find a light you like and you’re ready to hit that “order” button.

Wood Color Rendering Comparison
Color Rendering Comparison

DIMMER COMPATIBILITY

Lastly, make sure that the LEDs you select are dimmable. This is something you need to check in the product cut sheet or through the web store that you are browsing. ​

Also, you’ll need to make sure that the dimmer you select will be compatible with the LED light fixture.  In the past, we could easily dim incandescent and halogen lighting with a simple rotary dimmer. This may or may not work for a new LED light fixture.  

You wouldn’t expect your television remote to be able to turn on your stereo system, would you? The same is true for LED dimmers. You have to make sure that the dimmer switch can actually communicate with the light fixture.  

There’s a variety of dimming protocols: it may be TRIAC, Electronic Low Voltage (ELV), 0-10 Volt, or DALI. So make sure to work with your electrician or a sales representative to make sure that the components of your lighting design are all compatible. 

Why it is Important to do a Lighting Calculation?

If you want to be confident in your lighting design, you have to do a lighting calculation. It’s as simple as that. ​

But how do we actually estimate how bright a room actually needs to be? Well, the footcandle targets for a room are set by the Illuminating Engineering Society of North America (IESNA), and the International Association of Lighting Designers (IALD). This professional organization has studied and analyzed the functional requirements for each kind of space designed by architects. For residential projects, I like to refer back to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory & Department of Energy’s footcandle targets, since those are made freely available to the public. These are the targets I use for my own projects, and are the basis for the lighting estimator on this webpage. ​

AVOID MISTAKES

You don’t want to have too little light. It’s expensive for a contractor and electrician to come back after the fact to revise the lighting strategy and patch the walls/ceiling. This happened to an interior designer early in my career, and it wasn’t a fun situation. For me, it was the beginning of a great collaboration with this design professional, because we worked on many projects after that – but of course it would have been better if this interior designer hadn’t made that mistake to begin with. ​

Likewise, you also don’t want to be too bright, and overspend on lighting, just because you’re unsure what is needed and just hoping for the best (yikes!). 

This is fundamentally why I created lighting estimators – to balance making sure there’s enough light, while also making sure a client isn’t paying for too many lights. Hopefully using the calculator was straightforward. Reach out with questions (before buying/building anything), if you’d like help! Good luck on your project!​​

-Steve Duncan, AIA​

Architect & Lighting Designer

Works Cited: Ripple Vibe

Duncan, Steve. “Why Is It Important to Do a Lighting Calculation?” Lighting Design Insights. [LightingJUMP.com, https://www.lightingjump.com/how-many-lights-cinematic-vibe]. 

The author emphasizes the necessity of conducting lighting calculations to ensure effective lighting design in various spaces. He cites the Illuminating Engineering Society of North America (IESNA) and the International Association of Lighting Designers (IALD) for their established footcandle targets that help determine appropriate lighting levels. Duncan also mentions the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and the Department of Energy’s publicly available footcandle targets, which he uses for residential projects. He shares a personal anecdote about the complications that arise from inadequate lighting, stressing the importance of precise calculations to avoid costly adjustments and excessive spending. The lighting estimator featured on his webpage is designed to assist clients in achieving optimal lighting without overspending.

REFERENCES

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