Enter a dark room and turn on a light. The illumination spreads across the walls and tables. Darkness vanishes and the room takes on a very different feel. Lighting create remarkable nuances in the ambiance of a room. Pendant lighting and Vaxcel lighting can offer a certain elegance and direct the light in a room. Whether we are doing light design for a room or trying to illuminate aspects of our lives the fundamentals remain the same.

Above all, shadows are not the enemy. The goal of light design is not to dispel all shadows, but to shape the light, to create highlights, lowlights, and areas of focus. If a room is blasted with light removing all shadows, the space becomes less comfortable and institutional. Good lighting design can make a small room feel larger and larger rooms feel quaint. By illuminating specific areas the eye is led and washed in the images that the designer prefers. The flat unattractive wall can be shaped with shadows to create depth and texture. The light can be focused onto the best features of the room whether it is the art on the wall or the plants by the couch. Every room has its strengths and weaknesses that can be used to the best advantage. Often it is the very design obstacle that a room presents that creates the most innovative solutions and helps create a more interesting space.

In our daily lives we are much the same. Every person on the planet has strengths and weaknesses. Our biggest mistake is that we think our flaws need to be hidden. If we design our life like we might light a room we will quickly realize the first thing we need to do is to figure out what the center of focus is going to be and what other elements of our lives need to be lit up. If we throw all of our energy on all aspects of our lives it will be like trying to blast light on every corner. There will be no sense of depth or attention to detail. The whole room or life will seem washed out and cold.

A perfect lighting plan isn’t about banishing all the flaws of a room or hiding them. A good plan is about incorporating them into the room, making the odd shape interesting, or turning a giant flat space into something captivating. In our day to day lives there are a hundred possible points of focus. Putting our energy, our light, onto the most important areas helps create our values, our goals and how we spend our time. In our example of lighting design, light requires energy. The same is true for our everyday lives. The places we focus demands energy. If we try to spread that over every aspect of our daily world, the emotional cost could be dramatic.

Plan a lighting design for your day to day experience. Decide what is important, where you want to spend your energy and what can take less of your focus. Enter into a well lit room and take clues about focusing attention.