Hire a lighting planner or not?

You know that you don’t want to fall on the stairs (= evenly bright) and that you prefer dim lighting with red wine (for looking for lost earrings or contact lenses there are LED flashlights).

As I said, we have already experienced shipwreck even in the specialty store. This even went as far as rescinding the purchase contract afterward. I simply don’t trust myself to equip the house with the right lights in the right places. I lack the imagination and market overview.

If even professionals have a hard time selling the appropriate lights to you in this dense product jungle, how is it supposed to work if I just look something up with Aunt Google? Take the roof terrace... I don’t know at what distance how many spots with which power need to be installed up there for it to look good. And it goes like that throughout the whole house.

I find it difficult. Until now, we’ve always lived with crappy lighting because it was never professionally coordinated. When we visit acquaintances who can create different scenarios in the living room, it’s top-notch. Whether in the end it’s done by a lighting planner or a salesman/installer who knows their stuff, I wouldn’t care. But going back to Heini Huber around the corner to the "lighting specialty store" – I won’t do that anymore. I only do things where I can look at reference projects. Especially if you want to stage the house a bit on the outside as well, I will never manage that on my own.

But again, going around the corner to Heini Huber in the "lighting specialty store" – I don’t do that anymore. I only do things where I can look at reference projects.

Exactly. As a first step, you get addresses from the specialist dealers of the manufacturers. The suitable ones are probably advertising in Ambiente / Architectural Digest / Interior & the like. Or you ask the bartender at the golf club.

We built a simple house, rectangular, single-story, without a basement. We contributed our own labor, calculated carefully, and still hired a lighting planner. Cost: 0.21% of the total amount spent on the little house including the land. By the way, we hardly own any artworks by others. Overall, there are simply too few walls.

However, I was professionally predisposed and had already attended several lectures on lighting design. We had started planning the lighting ourselves with half-knowledges and realized that it was not enough. We commissioned a well-reputed lighting company, paid them separately, and communicated this as an independent contract. We are very satisfied.

What stuck with me from the lectures included, among other things:
- Older people need significantly more light than younger people to perceive something as equally well lit
- The brain simply ignores room corners (if they are unlit) – dining rooms with central lighting over the table, for example – such corners are neither noticed in terms of room size nor used or walked through. They practically do not exist.
- The human eye always takes the brightest (window with sunlight) as a reference for "light," everything else seems more or less dim. Attention is also directed this way. Desk with a view? Library where you can also read at the table in the back? Then you either need a slightly shaded window (frosted blind) or significantly more lumens in the room.

We would also have been uncertain about how many lumens we needed where.

Whoever can pull that off by themselves – great. The lighting planner can do it. I find it a sensible and worthwhile investment.

Best regards, Gabriele

I have now visited a lighting planner and got an impression. We will definitely not do without it.

Will you then show us the planning? For us doubters, there can only be added value in how and what comes out of it :)

Will you then show us the planning? For us doubters, it can only be a benefit to see how and what comes out of it :)

I can do that, sure. But it will take a while. First, we have to get into L4, because exactly drawn furniture is the prerequisite to get started. And our provider won’t do that before the contract is signed – so far he has only been commissioned for service phases 1-3.

I think doubters is the wrong word. There are people who value such things and people who do not. For us, for example, such things are 1,000 times more important than whether the front door is frameless from the inside or not. It will never be the case that even 2 out of 1,000 people set exactly the same priorities in building a house.

Then we basically only have to decide whether to work with a general contractor electrician and implement a Loxone system or to completely outsource the electrical work and assign the electrical contract to a KNX professional.