Two of the most important words that describe light are GLOW and GLARE.
To create glow, I illuminate a home or business building discreetly, so you can’t see the source. Take Light Studio LA, for example, the space feels self-illuminated.

Like a human being who glows from within, the dwelling attracts the right kind of attention. It’s naturally beautiful.

Glare certainly attracts attention, but so does the garish lighting of a liquor store. Glare will catch your eye, but actually harm the presentation of the building.


What makes a building look truly beautiful is when the lighting plan was designed into the architecture.

Unfortunately, this doesn’t always happen. Too often young architects are not thinking about lighting when they are in their design process. They try to add it on later, and this is what creates glare. Maybe it looks nice, but never fabulous.
Have you ever driven past the Mormon Temple on the Interstate-405 in La Jolla?
Religious groups obviously want their places of worship to be inspirational. They want the design – the steeples and lighting – to suggest reaching and looking upward, to God. Well, the temple achieves that and more.

When you drive by at night the lighting and architecture are in sync, together they make you want to look. And what you see is self-illumination, spirituality.
This doesn’t happen by accident. This is why it is so important to have a lighting designer on board when the project begins.

GLOW happens by design. This beautiful dining room was created as a collaboration with the interior designer, Peggy Braswell. The combination of a diffused Fortuni fixture along with well placed recessed downlights made for this magical image.

GLARE often happens because the lighting design was an after thought: external fixtures, floodlights that are too bright (and are not designed with glass to diffuse the glare)…well, you get the picture.
My first mentor in theater lighting design described excellent lighting this way: “What a lighting designer does is support the set design and quite often isn’t recognized. The best lighting nobody is thinking about because it’s so integral to the overall stage picture.”
I guess it means I’ll always work in the shadows. But that’s OK by me if it means your home or business building shares the limelight with other great architecture because the lighting is just right.