Designed with the ceiling still open
The cheapest moment to get lighting right is before the plasterboard goes up. Cove details, driver locations and trimless apertures all depend on decisions made at this stage.
Lighting design
Design that arrives with the drawings
We work alongside you and your architect from the reflected ceiling plan onward, on new construction and remodels alike — so the lighting is part of the house, not something added once the ceiling is closed.
What you get
Documents your team can build from
Everything we issue is meant to be used by someone else: an architect coordinating a ceiling, an electrician pulling cable, a builder pricing a package.
- Reflected ceiling plan with fixture positions and aiming
- Fixture schedule — make, model, finish, optic, colour temperature
- Beam-angle and illuminance calculations where they matter
- Control intent: groups, scenes, DALI lines and sensor locations
- Switching and dimming schedule for the electrical contractor
- Manufacturer data sheets collected in one place
Working with what is already there
Existing joists, limited voids and ceilings you would rather not open. Low-voltage fixtures and remote drivers make far more possible in a retrofit than most people expect.
The rooms you actually live in
Layered light for cooking, eating, reading and winding down — including the low evening scene nobody thinks to ask for until they are living there.
Gardens, façades and approaches
Grazing light on stone, uplit trees, and paths and steps that read clearly after dark without floodlighting the neighbours.
The technical decisions
This is where we choose how it all gets driven
You choose fixtures on how they look and what they do to a room. Everything behind that — which driver, which protocol, wired or wireless, where the gear lives — gets decided here, in design, before anything is ordered. It is the part of the job you should never have to think about.
The right driver for each luminaire
Constant current or constant voltage, sized to the fixture rather than to a habit — then located somewhere cool and reachable, because heat and access decide how long it lasts and how easily it is replaced.
The right way to dim and control it
Phase-cut, 0-10V, DALI or wireless — chosen against how the rooms are used, how likely the zoning is to change, and what the house can physically take. A remodel with closed ceilings gets a different answer from a new build.
Checked on paper before it is ordered
Load, line length, device count and spare capacity worked through in advance, with groups and scenes agreed first and the topology derived from them — so commissioning is not the moment anyone discovers a problem.
Why it happens here and not later. The driver and control decisions constrain ceiling build-ups, cable routes and where gear can be mounted. Made during design they cost nothing; made after the fixtures are ordered they become a change order.
Working with your architect
Where we plug in
1
Concept stage
Early enough to influence ceiling build-ups, cove details and where the drivers can live. This is the cheapest moment to get it right.
2
Design development
Fixture selection against the finishes and the daylight, coordinated with mechanical and structural in the ceiling void.
3
Pricing and build
A schedule your builder can price line by line, and answers to questions while the job is running.
4
Commissioning
We set the scenes on site with the client in the room — the design is not finished until the light in the space is right.
Bring us in early
The best lighting decisions are made while the ceiling is still a line on a drawing. Send the plans and we will tell you what we would change.