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Upstairs/Downstairs
Lighting Hope for All of Us
By David K. Warfel
Final installment in David Warfel’s Lighting Hope at Home series.
Of all the moments of discovery, connection, and understanding provided at LightFair this year, none stirred my emotions or challenged my thinking as deeply as the fifty minutes allotted to the Light + Justice conference session. Led by Edward Bartholomew, Mark Loeffler, and Lya S. Osborn, the stunning power of the presentation still has me reeling. Their session landed with perfect timing as I prepared to write this, my sixth and final article in my Lighting Hope at Home series.
I intended to write about lighting hope for all of us, a call to arms to democratize good lighting, especially in our homes. Edward, Mark, and Lya shook up my thinking and clarified my focus. We do not need to change the way we light at home because it would be better. We need to change what we are doing because we need to provide light justly.
UPSTAIRS/DOWNSTAIRS
A few years ago my wife and I streamed our way through the entire Downton Abbey series, finally taking in what millions had already enjoyed. The series focuses on wealthy English nobility in the early twentieth century and the many servants that make their sizeable estate function. It falls into the category sometimes described as upstairs/downstairs stories, a dual focus on the wealthy living upstairs and the working-class toiling in the basement. The Light + Justice session caused me to see that I, as a lighting designer, support a modern version of the upstairs/downstairs duality cleverly disguised as “front-of-house/back-of-house.”
Simply put, upstairs or front-of-house lighting is designed to exceed code and provide something more, something beautiful, a best-possible experience for the occupant. Downstairs or back-of-house lighting is laid out to minimize energy usage and installation costs, thereby enabling economies of scale that minimize investment and maximize financial returns. This certainly occurs today in the homes of the ultra-wealthy, but that is not the only place it exists.
Inside the walls of the production-built home, you will find very little architectural lighting. What is included is likely to be disk lights and a few trendy (but often poorly functional) decorative pendants. Thousands and thousands (millions, really) are built every year in this style. The entire house is “downstairs.”
Outside, neighborhoods for the advantaged are more likely to have strict lighting ordinances that protect beneficial darkness, minimizing light pollution and trespass. The results can include better sleep, better health, and more natural beauty. Across town, the disadvantaged live surrounded by higher levels of light pollution that threaten sleep and all but obliterate the stars. We know now how important darkness is, but only a select few can enjoy it.
This series is about residential lighting, but I have also designed numerous commercial, institutional, and hospitality projects that embody the same unjust treatment. I have designed restaurants where the people who spend the most money and the least amount of time have the best lighting, while those that may work a ten-hour shift lack any natural light and work beneath the cheapest possible artificial light. I have done schools where the entry hall, commons area, and maker spaces have great lighting, yet the classrooms barely get by. I have walked through many hospital lobbies beneath $15,000 pendants and walls of glass and watched as the nursing staff works underneath $50 fixtures without a window in sight.
We are doing harm, and it is time to stop.
WHY SHOULD WE CARE?
This morning as I sat talking to my partner over coffee, I shared a bit of what I was hoping to say in these pages. She helpfully pointed out that not everyone wants to help the poor, and that should be okay. I agree. This is not really about helping the poor; it is about helping everyone, rich or poor, by opening our mysterious profession and making good lighting more accessible for all.
Why should we care about light and justice at all? If we collectively support the scientific discovery of the last few decades, then we believe that too much light at night and too little light in the daytime causes harm, even shortening lives. Many of us believe that human productivity and well-being can be negatively affected by the wrong light. Many of us believe that too much light is contributing to planetary degradation. Many of us believe that light can help us heal faster, or score higher on tests, or reduce the symptoms of aging. If these are true, then they are true for everyone on the planet. That is reason enough for us all to care about helping others with light. But, we may need to take a hard look at ourselves and our industry and join a dialogue for meaningful change.
To help more than a fortunate few, we must provide plug-in solutions that deliver not just light, but good light.
CONFLICT OF INTEREST: OF WHOSE INTEREST?
When I entered the lighting design profession several decades ago, I absorbed what seems to be a central tenet of our industry: lighting designers should profit only on their expertise and time, never on product. As I understand it, prohibiting ourselves from selling fixtures avoids the potential of mistrust with the public. I was – and still am – proud to tell my clients that they can trust me because it makes no financial difference to me if I specify one ten-dollar fixture or one hundred hundred-dollar fixtures. On the surface, this is a solid requirement to protect the value of our profession and the integrity of its members.
Yet, this belief may also strengthen the divide between upstairs and downstairs, between the advantaged and the disadvantaged. A designer abiding by this rule can only really help those with the means to pay a consultant, and that dramatically restricts the designer’s client list. Of course, a designer could choose to donate their services in a pro bono fashion, but this relegates the receiver to the charity column. Justice, at least as I understand it, is not about charity. It is about equity.
If a designer decides to profit from the sale of the fixtures, which is likely the only revenue stream available in lighting for lower-cost projects, they may be shunned by the profession. This model is still relevant and viable – indeed, it is how our company survives – but it may be time to look for a third way between elite work and charity.
THE SOLUTION: THE END OF OUR PROFESSION?
Lately, I have been toying with an unusual ten-year professional goal: obsolescence. We often hear clients say, “We love the new lighting in our home,” but, in this case, I also want to hear, “And we did not pay you a dime for it.” As I mulled the Light + Justice tenets in the weeks after LightFair, it occurred to me that true equity in light could only be achieved when the disadvantaged have access to great lighting. In our current economic structure, this can only happen when it is free or extremely low cost.
Our company’s studios will design lighting for several hundred homes this year, nearly all of which will be for clients with significant means. Some of our projects will be enormous, some will be small, some will be average, but all will be high-dollar projects compared to the vast majority of homes built or remodeled this year. As a team, we spend time puzzling over the disconnect between our desire to help others and the financial realities of lighting design practice. We blog about plug-in solutions, brainstorm solutions for production builders, and help out with lower cost services. While two hundred homes is a large number of projects for a residential lighting design team, it is insignificant compared to the million homes that will be built in the United States this year, the five million homes that will change hands, or the two hundred million homes currently occupied. Multiply that by all the countries in the world, and our efforts are completely inconsequential.
If we want to help millions, lighting designers have to get out of the way. To get out of the way, we have to engage the public, simplify the process and product, and build a new revenue model.
ENGAGE THE PUBLIC
A recent candidate for an open lighting designer position with our company said, “I realized that to be in lighting meant to be in education.” She knew from experience that lighting is not a known entity in the world, that she would have to inform and educate her clients so they would make better decisions about light in their projects. Many of us find this to be true – our presentations include justifications for our work like photometrics, educational slides discussing color temperature, and examples of glare or poor uniformity ratios. We are, essentially, educating the eight billion people on the planet one client at a time.
If we are to provide better lighting for all homes, we need to be where the average consumer learns. We need to be on their screens. Our industry is measured in tens of billions of dollars every year; a ten-episode season of a lighting television show would cost around four million dollars to produce and air. This is less than a hundredth of a percent of our annual revenue. We have the means to engage and excite the public. Do we have the collective willpower to change the conversation one million clients at a time?
SIMPLIFY THE PROCESS & PRODUCT
It will not be enough to simply show the world that better light is possible at home. We also have to make it easy to plan, purchase and install. That means the profession of lighting design needs consumer-facing alternatives that are simple enough to enact without us. That means that products have to be available that are affordable, easy to install, and function better than the commodity products we currently sell. That means good lighting has to be achievable on a small budget and tight timeline. That means that good lighting must be possible without hiring an electrical contractor to redo hundreds of millions of existing homes.
Perhaps we could create a guide to lighting a new home that any homeowner, builder, or electrician can use to upgrade light.
Perhaps we could bring out a system of wide-range tunable white products that come with preset scenes that work together out of the box, with wireless scene buttons, that do not require a smart phone to operate.
BUILD A NEW PROFESSIONAL MODEL
The solutions proposed by Bartholomew, Loeffler, and Osborn include providing daylight and views to those who live and work in lower-cost housing, investing in electric light equally throughout projects, seeking low-bid public projects for our practices, recognizing and celebrating projects that fight injustice in addition to the showstopping big-budget projects, and investing in local organizations and our neighbors. I think we could also reinvent the entire revenue model.
Perhaps we need a package that costs $200, illuminates an entire room, comes with step-by-step design instructions, and pays a designer $10. Multiply it by a million homes and we have a good business. Multiply it by a hundred million homes and we can employ an entire industry.
LIGHTING HOPE AT HOME
Over the past twenty years, our industry has witnessed a technological revolution and unprecedented scientific discovery. We have the tools and knowledge to deliver better light than at any other point in human history. Yet lighting at home, despite getting brighter and more efficient, is not getting better. It is arguably getting worse. We can work together, not towards a brighter future, but towards a better future, for all of us. But, we need to point our industry in a new direction to get there.
Is there hope for lighting at home? Only you can answer. ■
