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Human perception, architecture & LightLatest articles
Build it Live – Bicester 11-12 June
We are exhibiting for the first time at Bicester this coming weekend 11-12 June. We will be on stand C5 so it would be great if you could come and say hello. Please see the link for free tickets to the event. FREE ticket...
We are in the Blind Business
Control of daylight is an important part of a lighting design, planning for the slow transition from daylight to evening and (electric) lighting sets the first scene of a secret lighting design. Part of hiding and integrating the lighting can be to use the space...
We are also designing “custom” lighting in Saudi Arabia…
Secret Lighting are now “official distributor” for Klus, whose profiles and technical lighting skills allow us to design LEDs in unique styles. Klus recently aided Artist Karolina Halatek’s “Beacon” for the Noor Riyadh Festival. The installation...
Further Reading
Clocks go back this weekend – time to adjust your lights
These two things will allow you a more comfortable evening and better lighting. Windows, doors and roof lights change to big black mirrors as soon as it begins to get dark and you put indoor lights “on”. To avoid this “mirror” effect for a while perhaps an extra hour...
Why having a “lighting strategy” is more important than a lighting design – in one word budget !!
A well thought out strategy and design approach allows us to predict cost in advance and adjust the designs to fit the design accordingly. There are lots more benefits of a strategy namely:- Having a guiding concept of the look and feel for each space. Allowing the...
Grand Designs
Lighting has so many new choices why would you choose rows of downlights or even be restricted by a range of fittings in a catalogue? The NEW “Custom Build” range of LED lighting by Secret Lighting offers you light that is every time unique to you and your home...
“Tutti Frutti”
The New Way to Design Lighting If you have read any other article on “how to design lighting” you will have heard “layers” at least three layers made of ambient, then task or accents, then decorative, now Forget Everything. Let’s...
We only have 10 years to save the world but it’s going to take us 100 years to do it
World Pandemic or not, we have all noticed the wealth of supporting information to climate change and our responsibility personally and in business to adapt. As lighting designers we are not complacent or satisfied with just a switch to LEDs, it is...
Planning Downlights and Moroccan hummus
In 25 years + of lighting design I have done 2 things regularly … one is placing thousands of downlights in projects, the other is prepared and eaten almost as many meals … I like to cook, so I will share my recipes with you for designing beautiful rooms with ceiling...
Campaign for better lighting
I was hasty and should be more respectful! But I can’t help disagreeing with 1.375 Million answers….many of you agree with ME! Following on my research from the last Blog and Internet Formulas… The Question was: Client - “I want some lights in my room…how many...
My client recently got told “NOT” to buy LED lighting – Inside a lighting shop!
So I asked Google the same question the client asked: Client: “I want some lights in my room…how many should I have for the right lighting effect?” I got 1,375 Million results, many refer to some crude formula. As a curious person I followed the...
Pendant lighting: 18 ideas in 18 seconds.
“Pendant”, a word that we use for jewelry and hanging styles of lights, the thing they both have in common is decorative and is designed to be a compliment. How you look and perceive a space matters, from a mathematical, engineer’s solution a pendant light will give...
Top down lighting because we only have one Sun!
Hard wired into our preferences is that we like one strong form of lighting, this should not be directly overhead but to one side (In theatre the term key light) above …Top left preferences. In a study of art through the ages in over 200 pictures 75% of them displayed...
Lighting Design but not as we know it Jim! (& it kills bacteria too).
Not including theatre, which is important but a specialised field we can learn from, Lighting for the built environment has developed 2 co-existing skill sets, The “engineering” of lighting design laying down suggested lux levels, uniformity and rules by which a...
What are “Saccades” and why is it important to lighting design?
Your eyes absorb information by rapidly moving from point to point scanning the environment for information these rapid movements can be large or small and upto 4 or 5 per second and are known as Saccades. (actually an old French word for the “flick of a sail”)...

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