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Professional interior designers are expertly trained in the use of lighting features to make breathtaking 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 clarify this fascinating subject. This third article talks about how to make patterns using opaque materials.

The second way for an interior designer to make 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 know a surface and its texture. For example, the “standard” technique often seen in London residences simply involves casting a gentle play of light across a wall. The light brushes the fittings, causing the wall 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 wall 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 – recreating a look that is well loved 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 go up vertical columns of light which dance across the wall 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 “Colour Me Brightly!” I will end by revealing some top lighting tips from London’s interior design community.

Interior design consultancies know light in all its forms. In London, lighting is crucial to interior design consultancies that need to make stunning results. In this, the eighth and final article in my series which I call “DeLIGHTed by Design,” I continue to draw on my experience working with some of London’s Top Interior Deign Consultancies to clarify this exciting area.

When most schoolchildren are questioned to reckon of the countryside, they often imagine the hot, shimmering flicker of a bonfire on a crisp autumn evening or the comforting flare of a scented candle. But how is an interior design consultancy to re-interpret these fabulously earthy and atmospheric scenes for, say, an elegant central London flat? The answer is artificial light.

Interior design consultancies recognise that artificial light is available in many different shades. It is similar to the situation with paint, where buckets that are marked “white” can really contain a multitude of different tones. Interior design consultancies use colour professionals who know that the cool white light of an energy-efficient bulb makes an entirely different effect from the warm yellow-orange tones of a tungsten filament. In London, low-voltage halogen options are often used in darker flats where there is a need to add light during the daytime. Interior design consultancies will install dimmer switches that allow homeowners to reduce the brightness of halogens at night, causing them to adopt a more husky yellow-red glow that is akin to an ancient lantern or oil lamp. By contrast, lamplight is too yellow for most interior design consultancies to include for daytime use, and indeed it can lead to sleepiness or lethargy at work (one of the reasons it is nearly never seen in London offices). But at night, tungsten lamps become much more warm and welcoming.

Some interior design consultancies have a like-despise relationship with fluorescent lighting options. These fixtures often emit various shades of white, ranging from a very cool, nearly daylight tone, which can be quite crisp, to a warm, rosy streetlight glow. Some interior design consultancies like fluorescent lights for London kitchens, where they illuminate workspaces but save on electricity bills. But, other interior design consultancies stay well away from fluorescent options because their colour does not change as they are dimmed. Fluorescents merely become less bright under such conditions, which can contribute to an unattractively dull, and nearly grey, lighting effect.

That brings me to the end of my series “DeLIGHTed by Design.” Thank you for letting me share with you about how London interior design consultancies make fabulous lighting schemes!

Professional interior designers are expertly trained in the use of lighting features to make breathtaking 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 clarify this fascinating subject. This first article is about patterns.

Question a London schoolgirl to imagine natural patterns, and she may talk 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 make relaxing patterns. By contrast, bold graphic statements in a wallpaper 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 made not only by fabric 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 abstract forms.

Patterns of light fall 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 well-known 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 may shine through the branches of a tree to make moving patterns of light and shade below, and similarly a low-voltage uplight, positioned behind indoor plants, can make gorgeous 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 make breathtaking 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 clarify this fascinating subject. This second article talks about how to make 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 make fabulous banding across a shiny floor covering in the London summer. Some interior design firms like to use ornamental metal lanterns to paint fiery asteroids on walls and furniture, while light projected through a sculpted screen can make magnificent abstract 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 tiny checkmarks of light onto local furniture when exposed to a bright London sky in springtime. A fabulous 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 vital than the object itself! Interior designers can expressively use perspective to distort the pattern from complete realism, when lit front-on, to Baconesque abstract enchantment when illuminated at an acute angle. The same effect can be made by using mirrors to refocus natural light from bay windows in some of the more luxurious London residences.

Glass is another well loved tool for patterns. A frosted glass table 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 abstract patterns onto the floor underneath the table. I have seen some London Interior Design consultancies deliberately illuminate trophy-style glassware on show 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 make patterns with opaque objects.