Lighting Techniques: The Short List

Lighting designers and engineers take advantage of a number of techniques and tricks to make illumination design work...

By Siva K. Haran, P.E. March 1, 2001

Lighting designers and engineers take advantage of a number of techniques and tricks to make illumination design work:

  • Backlighting: The diffusing of light through translucent materials such as fabric, stained glass or acrylic panels.

  • Beam play: Shapes of light on walls or floors. Light beams and shadows can be used to enliven a bland space like a corridor.

  • Downlighting: The directing of light at 180 degrees from a fixture aperture. The method is used for uniform lighting in overhead task-lighting applications, for example.

  • Grazing: Illumination from a low angle of incidence, causing the texture of a vertical surface to pop into view.

  • Highlighting: A technique that creates an amount of brightness on a featured object that is about five times that on the background. Low-voltage lamps are used and are very efficient for this technique.

  • Shadow play: The reverse of beam play: the pattern of light is the background, while the shape of the shadow carries the visual message. Wide and soft-edged beams are used here.

  • Silhouetting: A technique that sandwiches an object between the viewer and a sheet of light. The object will be outlined by the light whose brightness acts as a negative space. Its high contrast focuses attention on the outlined shape of the featured object.

  • Sparkle: Where the light source is the object of interest instead of a surface or an object.

  • Structural lighting: A method of mounting fixtures on structural members like stairs, cornices and box booms.

  • Uplighting: This technique is used when what is up is interesting and should be emphasized.

  • Wallwashing: A technique to wash a wall with a sheet of brightness.

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