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article by Kathryn Dawson

by SLDdigital

Professional interior designers are expertly trained in the use of lighting features to create incredible results. In this four-part series which I call “Colour Me Brightly: Understanding Light in Interior Design,” I draw on my experience in London’s interior design community to explain this fascinating subject. This second article speaks about how to create patterns using illuminated materials.

Any perforated textile, when lit from the back or from the inside, will speckle adjacent forms with pattern, from point strips and pirouettes to constellations and dazzling laser specks. The professional interior designer can use the trim of a window covering to create mythologic banding crossways a shiny floor covering in the London summer. Some interior design firms love to use ornamental metal lanterns to paint fiery asteroids on walls and furniture, while light projected through a sculpted screen can create magnificent nonfigurative outlines in expressive contemporary interior design schemes. A factory-inspired metal stairwell with perforated treads – of the type often reinterpreted for ultra-modern interior design schemes – can throw little checkmarks of light onto local furniture when exposed to a bright London sky in springtime. A mythologic option with a wooden staircase would require the interior designer to specify a grit-washed tread, to deliberately throw stunning shadows from the rail onto the adjacent wall. Abstract wire-mesh sculptures by local London artists can engender powerful interior design emotions, with the pattern even becoming more important than the goal itself! Interior designers can expressively use appearance to distort the pattern from complete realism, when lit front-on, to Baconesque nonfigurative enchantment when illuminated at an acute angle. The same effect can be created by using mirrors to refocus natural light from bay windows in some of the more luxurious London residences.

Glass is another favourite tool for patterns. A frosted glass plateau can be lit from above with a halogen downlighter to cast intricate outlines of reflected light onto the ceiling, and the interior designer can even use positioning to cause refracted light to splash nonfigurative patterns onto the floor underneath the table. I have seen some London Interior Design consultancies deliberately illuminate trophy-style glassware on display shelves from the front so that the etching on the glass throws deep shadows that recapitulate a core design theme.

In the next (third) article in this series called “Colour Me Brightly!” I will reveal another secret of London’s interior design community: how to create patterns with opaque objects.

More Interior Design Articles

Professional interior designers are expertly trained in the use of lighting features to create incredible results. In this four-part series which I call “Colour Me Brightly: Understanding Light in Interior Design,” I draw on my experience in London’s interior design community to explain this fascinating subject. This first article is about patterns.

Ask a London schoolgirl to envision natural patterns, and she might speak at length of curvaceous seashells, the undulating edge of waves on the shore, the grooves in a gnarled tree trunk. Interior designers know that patterns are all around us. Patterns profoundly influence all interior design schemes, transforming our appreciation of color and texture, adding fluctuations and drifts or promoting harmony and stillness. London Interior Designers will focus on soft, fluid outlines in order to create resting patterns. By contrast, bold graphic statements in a cover stencil can be invigorating for a London discotheque or salon. Pattern is a foundational ingredient of interior design, fragmenting overwhelming shapes and plain surfaces while simultaneously lending personality and profundity to a room.

London’s professional interior designers know one huge secret: pattern is created not only by artifact and wallpaper. Light also forms any number of patterns through a virtual tussle or rough-and-tumble interaction between light and shadow. Light patterns are foundational to interior design schemes – from snippeted, kinetic and frosted patterns to curvy arcs, spearhead-style lines and theatrical projections of nonfigurative forms.

Patterns of light start into two main interior design categories. The first is all about objects in the path of light, casting shadows. We draw our inspiration from the natural world where, when sunlight strikes rippling water on London’s famous River Thames, flickering patterns are reflected up into the trees along the water’s edge. Similarly, if an artificial light source is directed onto water – perhaps a pool, fountain or babbling artificial brook – active reflections will dapple the surrounding walls and become an interior design feature. Sunlight might shine through the branches of a tree to create moving patterns of light and shade below, and similarly a low-voltage uplight, positioned behind indoor plants, can create beautiful interior design features on the walls and ceilings. This technique can be stunning both inside and outside the building.

In my next article, I turn to patterns that use perforations and glass.

Professional interior designers are expertly trained in the use of lighting features to create incredible results. In this four-part series which I call â??Colour Me Brightly: Understanding Light in Interior Design,â? I draw on my experience in Londonâ??s interior design community to explain this fascinating subject. This third article speaks about how to create patterns using opaque materials.

The second way for an interior designer to create light-based patterns involves opaque surfaces, which reflect light back into a room. This pattern creation process is more sophisticated and can be fine-tuned for stunning interior design effects. Light portrayals impact how we comprehend a surface and its texture. For example, the â??standardâ? technique often seen in London residences simply involves casting a gentle play of light crossways a wall. The light brushes the fittings, causing the surround to appear even, flat and two-dimensional. Some top London Interior Designers know that their clients crave more drama and stylistic nuance. In such cases, placing lightwell fillings very close to the surround and angling them downwards can be really striking. Using this technique, interior design consultancies can transform the previous gentle wave into an enunciated designer style, as the photons shave the surface and build to form sturdy optical patterns, including top-level arcs and dramatic textures. A sharper, more laser-like focus will only make the pattern more conspicuous â?? recreating a look that is favourite in many trendy London nightclubs.

The direct counterpoint to this interior design technique involves the use of close-offset uplighting. With this approach, floor-level filaments cause the eye to move up vertical columns of light which diversion crossways the surround to form puddles of dappled reflected light on the ceiling. Professional London interior designers often work alongside colour consultants to make sure that the result has practical relevance as well as aesthetic appeal. In particular, some newer London residences often have uncomfortably low ceilings. Interior designers can use this lighting approach to draw attention to the vertical plane of the wall, thereby counterbalancing the hemmed-in feel of the low ceiling.

In the next and final article in this series called â??Colour Me Brightly!â? I will finish by revealing some top lighting tips from Londonâ??s interior design community.