Passive home design (or Sustainable Home Design) is gaining popularity in Australia and the lighting design requirements for these types of homes are quite specific. Passive house design is all about air tightness, heat recovery, avoiding unwanted temperature loss or gain and designing your home to optimise natural light and energy.

One of the greatest challenges designers face in evaluating lights is that every manufacturer formats their data differently; and not all data provided is 100% true! Some of it is very glamorous marketing dressed up to look like facts.

To quickly see past the marketing and get to the most important data, I offer you 6 key measurements of light behaviour to effectively compare light fittings. 

Designing a stylish AND functional lighting plan for your bathroom! Your bathroom is a highly complex and important room in your home. It’s a room many of us want to feel relaxed in, however it also needs to be lit in a way that enables us to wake up and get ready for the day in comfort and ease. Bathrooms are complex from all design and construction perspectives and require a lot of thought to get right.

Lighting design is an often overlooked element of Architecture and Interior Design, but it has the power to transform a space from ordinary to extraordinary. Everyone building and renovating a home should consider lighting design as a vital part of their design process. Designing light into your architecture to support how you want to live in your home does not have to be expensive, but it does require consideration and thought about that light is needed for each room, and each function in your home.

Directional lighting gets a bad rep because of the inappropriate use of downlights as general lighting in our homes. Directional light is a wonderfully diverse type of light, and it can be used to create a huge range of effects in the home. When used with consideration for what you want to see, a lighting design with well placed directional light can be magic.

Each type of fitting radiates light differently and causes unique effects. Selecting the type of light you want is the first step in your design process. Once you know what you want the light to do, you can select the right fitting to do it.

Glare is one of the most uncomfortable feelings light can create, but managed well it is also the cause of some of the most spectacular lighting effects we all enjoy from our decorative pendants and wall lights – because it is also “sparkle”.

What is this IP rating and what does it tell me? It stands for Ingress Protection – and it’s a rating that classifies light fittings (and lots of other things) for their suitability for use in different locations based on how or if water and/or dust can get into the fitting where the electricity is.

Light is science. The correct application to create an ambience of light is art. You really can't use light without fundamentally understanding both. To that end, I have outlined the five key fundamentals of light - on the science & maths side - because without first principles, light just doesn't make sense.

Not all of us have the space (or money or clothing!) to have an amazing walk in closet like the below, but you can make the most of any walk in robe with clever storage design - and of course the right light!

We collaborated on two distinctly different Kitchen designs, adding our signature MINT design style to the lighting. We focused on bringing a sense of space and open-ness with indirect light, added focused task lighting to make benches a delight to work on – and showcase the beautiful materials in the kitchen.

The Building Code of Australia (BCA) outlines the requirements for plumbing, insulation, heating, construction and many other aspects of home building – including Lighting. All new Australian homes and renovations that require a planning permit must comply with the BCA code – and specifically with regard to lighting, the section 13.7.6 in the NCC 2022 Volume 2 Hosing Provisions.

​One of the trickiest aspects of creating lighting plans can be working out how much light is enough. It comes down to being able to quantify ​light, which we achieve through knowing the lumen output of a fitting (Lumens is a measure of luminous flux, which is how much light is emitted by the light source/fitting) and the mounting height at which it will be installed and then being able to understand the quality of that light for performing various tasks in the home.

Getting your head around what colour means in light can be tricky. It's even more confusing with LED lighting than any previous technologies because the choices now are so diverse! Unfortunately, even though there is a lot of good information available, it can be difficult to work out who's telling the right story. Sadly, there are still some people who are experts in their field making blanket comments about the quality of light from energy efficient LED based on poor colour selection that can be very off putting when you're trying to figure out what the right light is for you.

Understandng the importance of colour rendering and colour temperature in Bathroom Lighting! The way quality of light is measured is called the ‘Colour Rendering Index’, or CRI for short. It is the measurement of the colour quality in light and it is different for every light fitting. Knowing what to look for is a crucial first step. Quality light fittings always have a CRI rating — so what exactly is CRI?

Decorative Lighting trends come and go and I’m noticing the wonderful thing about trends is that we are all slowly finding our own unique voices amongst them and making choices that reflect who we are and how we want to live – regardless of “fashion”.

Australian Bathroom Lighting Requirements, ZONES And IP Ratings.

Bathrooms have ZONES in the Australian Standards, which tell us what lighting can and can’t be used within certain distances of water sources. There are 3 zones – and each one has different requirements.

Here’s the snapshot breakdown of your lighting ZONES and what lighting can live in them…

With bathrooms becoming larger and more elaborate, proper lighting design is essential to making the most of the space - so don’t leave your light to chance, take the time to consider how you want to feel and function in your bathroom at different times of the day. By putting as much thought into your lighting design as you do the tiles and tap ware, you will end up with a bathroom that inspires - every day.

Lighting the Bathroom Mirror effectively! Of all the areas in your home where light is important - that magic moment in front of the mirror, when you check yourself and give yourself a wink and a smile before heading out into the world, is one of our top priorities!

It seems obvious really - stairs can be dangerous things, even for grown adults! But often very little thought goes into lighting them, and whilst there are many tried and true solutions, there's a few key things to keep in mind when thinking about lighting stairs to create the best result.