Thinking about lighting design

We in the lighting industry are sitting on a bad legacy. Sadly, nobody values us as much as they should, and everyone we work with remembers us at the very end of construction. When the budget and the time have run out, when the building has taken shape and many details are fixed, someone says: "oh, we also needed to light this place." So the urgent, low-priority lighting ends up expensive (more expensive than it would be if planned from the start) and random. Often it just repeats earlier solutions, with no thought for the details of the new space.

In İstanbul (and I think in Türkiye in general), almost 75% of historic building façades use "amber" and "white" together. Every day we meet these projects on another building, each one a copy of the last. They all have one thing in common: they use LED light sources. For a while I had wondered where this approach came from. It reminds me more of Indian culture, and frankly I don't like it at all. Questions came to mind. Is there such a definition in the literature? Has a general belief formed that this colour choice is the right approach? Is there a technical reason for it that I don't know about?

Then a friend in the industry sent me a message: they felt the same discomfort. So I decided to look at the subject in more detail. After talking to other professionals in the industry and reading the literature, this is my conclusion. Before LED lighting, façades mostly used sodium vapour lamps, because people saw them as energy efficient and good at bringing out the daytime look of the historic fabric. Metal halide lamps, on the other hand, picked out details such as windows and beams and gave depth. With the switch to LED, amber took the place of the sodium vapour colour, and white at 3000K and 4000K colour temperature took the place of metal halide. Once this solution "caught on", it went onto every building.

Frankly, I don't think you need such a big colour split just to bring out the details. You can stay at the same colour temperature and use different light levels. Or the design approach itself can create the difference. Of course, you must judge every work or space on many things: its context, its material details, its history. So I won't fall into the mistake I criticise by declaring one thing "right or wrong", but I am saying there can be other solutions.

In the little time modern life gives us, we all look for quick, simple fixes and ready-made formulas. People ask me "What's the best way to light my home?" or "What's the right solution for bathroom lighting?" For a long time I have given them one answer: "Just think about it." I think we in the lighting industry also need to do some soul-searching and think about "lighting design". Not only on the façades of historic buildings, but in every space we put our name to… Because if we don't care, we can't expect anyone else to care.

Stay with the light until our next issue...

Emre Güneş
PLD Türkiye