Interior Lighting Brief Preparation Checklist

Walk each room after dark and write down which fittings you actually switch on, which you never touch, and which you switch on and then find uncomfortable.

Habits reveal more than preferences do. A list of what you use and what you avoid gives a designer something to work from immediately.

Check every switch position and mark the ones that leave you crossing an unlit room to reach them, particularly at the top and bottom of stairs and coming in from outside.

Switch position is a layout question as much as an electrical one, and it is far easier to raise now than once the wiring conversation has moved on.

Any change to switch positions or circuits should be discussed with a qualified electrician, who can say what the work would involve in this property.

Write down which fittings are recessed, surface mounted, hanging or simply plugged in, since each type raises different questions about ceilings, voids and existing wiring.

The mounting type usually determines how much disruption a change causes, and it is among the first things a designer or electrician will ask about.

Record which rooms have no ceiling fitting at all and are lit only from sockets, and note where the trailing leads currently run across the floor.

Rooms lit only by lamps often have a historic reason behind them, and that reason usually shapes what is realistic to change.

Note any fitting that flickers, hums, becomes hot or has been replaced more than once, and describe the symptom rather than attempting to explain it.

Flickering, heat or repeated failures are matters for a qualified electrician to investigate; describe what you observe and do not diagnose it yourself.

Photograph each room lit only by its existing fittings with the daylight excluded, so you have an honest reference rather than a memory of how it feels.

Photographs taken after dark expose glare, shadow and colour problems that people stop noticing after living with them for years.

List the tasks that happen in each room and where the person stands or sits while doing them, including chopping, reading, ironing, homework and applying make-up.

A task and a position together tell a professional where light has to arrive, which is a far more useful instruction than a room name.

Note every place where you currently work in your own shadow, such as a worktop, a desk pushed against a wall, or a mirror lit only from the ceiling behind you.

Shadowing is the most common complaint about otherwise adequate lighting, and it is easiest to describe now while you can point at the spot.

Write down the route you take through the house at night and which points feel uncertain or need a low level of light rather than a full switch-on.

Where that route involves stairs, level changes or handrails, ask a qualified professional what applies locally rather than assuming a lighting change is enough.

Record which surfaces you want lit rather than which fittings you want, for example the worktop, the reading chair, the artwork wall or the inside of a wardrobe.

Naming the surface leaves the professional free to solve it, whereas naming a fitting fixes the answer before the question has been understood.

Note the seated and standing positions where a bright fitting would sit directly in someone's eyeline, including from a bed, a sofa and the dining table.

Glare is often more a matter of position than of the fitting itself, and marking the sightlines now avoids something that looks right on a plan and is unpleasant in use.

Identify the rooms used for more than one activity and describe how the light needs to differ between them, rather than accepting a single compromise setting.

Rooms that serve two purposes are where lighting most often fails, because one setting is chosen to serve both and serves neither well.

Note which direction each main window faces and roughly when the room receives direct sun, based on your own observation rather than on assumption.

Orientation explains why one room feels cold and flat while another is uncomfortable, and it shapes both the colour and the placement of light.

Record which rooms feel gloomy even in the middle of the day, and whether the cause is the window size, an overhang, a neighbouring building or a tree outside.

If you are considering enlarging or adding an opening to improve daylight, that is a question for a qualified professional and not a lighting decision.

Write down where reflected light already helps, such as a pale wall opposite a window or a light floor, since finishes and lighting have to be decided together.

Finishes do a great deal of the lighting work in a room, and a designer needs to know which of them are staying before proposing anything.

Identify the rooms where you close blinds or curtains during the day and say why, since privacy and glare often explain lighting habits better than preference does.

A room whose blinds stay shut is effectively an artificially lit room all day, and that changes what the brief has to ask for.

Describe how each room feels in the darker part of the year compared with the brightest, and note which rooms the household stops using then.

Rooms abandoned in winter usually have a lighting or a warmth problem, and saying which ones they are points the conversation straight at them.

Record whether anyone in the household is sensitive to bright light, works at night or sleeps during the day, and note which rooms that affects.

Lighting choices connected to sleep, vision or health should be discussed with a suitably qualified professional rather than settled from a design brief.

Decide and record how you want each room switched on: everything from one switch, separate switches for separate areas, or a small number of preset settings.

Control arrangements drive the wiring conversation, so an early written preference prevents a layout being drawn around an assumption.

Note where you would want a light controllable from two places, such as a landing, a long hallway, or a room with a door at either end.

These are the points people complain about for years afterwards, and they are simple to identify while you are still using the rooms as they are.

Write down your appetite for app-based or automated control honestly, including whether everyone in the household would be willing to use it.

Control systems that only one person understands tend to be switched back to manual, so the household view matters more than the feature list.

Record whether you want dimming everywhere or only in specific rooms, and note that dimming behaviour depends on the fitting and the control working together.

Ask a qualified electrician and the fitting supplier whether a proposed dimming arrangement is compatible, rather than assuming any control suits any lamp.

Group the lights you would want to come on together, and name the ones that should never come on together, such as a bedroom overhead when someone crosses the landing.

Grouping is where most of the everyday satisfaction with lighting comes from, and it is almost never described in a brief.

Decide whether entrance or external lighting belongs in the same conversation, and record what you would want it to do rather than what it should look like.

External lighting can affect neighbours and may be subject to local requirements, so confirm what applies with the relevant local authority.

Note the ceiling type in each room as far as you can see it, and whether there is a room, a loft, a flat roof or something unknown directly above.

What may be fixed into or run through a ceiling is a question for a qualified professional; record what you can see and let them establish what is possible.

Record where you already know pipes, tanks, ducts or a soil stack run, based on previous work, access hatches or noises you have learned to recognise.

Owners often hold information nobody else has about a property, and stating it early prevents a proposal that has to be unpicked.

Write down the ceiling heights in relative terms, room by room, using a comparison such as taller or lower than the hallway rather than a measurement.

Relative heights are enough for an early conversation and avoid the risk of a rough owner measurement being treated as a fixed dimension.

Note any ceiling you know to have been recently decorated or replastered, or that you would simply rather not disturb, and say so in the brief.

Disturbance tolerance is a genuine constraint that owners rarely state, and it often decides between a recessed and a surface-mounted approach.

Identify any position where a hanging fitting would be walked into, caught by a door, or left stranded over a table that might later move.

Pendants are chosen for the room as drawn rather than the room as lived in, and a note about furniture that moves prevents an obvious mistake.

Ask what access would be needed above or behind the ceiling for each idea you like, and record the answer before it quietly becomes an assumption.

Only a qualified professional can say what access a proposal needs and what making good would involve, so ask before the idea is carried forward.

Record whether you prefer a warm or a cool quality of light in each room, described in your own everyday words rather than in technical terms.

Plain description avoids the trap of quoting a technical value you have read somewhere, and lets the professional translate it properly.

Note the rooms where seeing colour accurately genuinely matters to you, such as where you dress, apply make-up, cook, sew or paint.

Colour accuracy is worth asking for where it is needed and worth trading away where it is not, but only if the brief says where.

Write down which existing finishes are staying, since a dark floor, a strong wall colour or a large mirror all change how a room responds to light.

A scheme drawn without knowing what stays will assume everything changes, which is almost never what the owner intends.

Hold any paint or fabric sample against the wall after dark with only the existing lighting on, and record how far it shifts from the daytime version of itself.

Samples chosen in daylight and then lit by warm lamps are among the most common late surprises in an interior scheme.

Note whether you want the light to look consistent between connected rooms or deliberately different, especially where doorways line up and both are seen at once.

Mismatched light between adjoining rooms is very visible from the threshold, and stating a preference prevents it being decided room by room.

Record any artwork, texture, joinery or feature you would want lit, and photograph it so the intent is not lost inside a written list.

A photograph of the thing you care about survives handovers between people far better than a line of description does.

Find out what an electrician expects to be shown on a first visit, and have it out on the table rather than hunting for it while they stand waiting.

Only a qualified electrician can advise on what a lighting change involves here, including any notification or certification that applies locally.

Record where the consumer unit is and whether you hold any paperwork from previous electrical work, without drawing conclusions from what it says.

Do not interpret existing electrical paperwork yourself; hand it to a qualified electrician and ask what it does and does not cover.

Note which rooms have been rewired or altered during your time in the property and which have not, since that difference usually shapes what is straightforward.

The history of the wiring is information only the owner holds, and it often explains why one room is easy and the next is not.

Write down whether the property will be occupied while work happens and which rooms must keep working lighting throughout, including any external route.

Rooms that cannot lose their lighting are a practical constraint on how the work is arranged, and they are easy to state in advance.

Ask who is responsible for making good ceilings, walls and decoration after any lighting work, and agree in writing what that includes.

Making good is among the items most often assumed rather than agreed in small electrical works, and the assumption is usually different on each side.

Note whether any lighting idea depends on other work happening first, such as plastering, flooring or joinery, and ask in what order the trades expect to work.

Lighting sits inside other trades, so knowing the order tells you when a decision genuinely has to be made rather than when it feels urgent.

Decide which lighting choices you want to make personally and which you are content to delegate, and say so at the first meeting rather than after a proposal arrives.

Stating the boundary early is far easier than rejecting work afterwards, and it lets a designer spend effort where you actually want it.

Write down the lighting effects you actively dislike, since a clear list of things to avoid is often more useful than a list of aspirations.

Aspirations are hard to interpret and easy to misread, whereas a dislike is unambiguous and rules out whole approaches quickly.

Record the one thing the lighting must get right in each room, so that any compromise later is measured against something you have already stated.

Compromises are inevitable, and a stated priority per room is what keeps them from all landing in the same place.

Note anything you have already bought or been given, and be honest about whether you would abandon it if it turned out not to suit the scheme.

A fitting nobody is willing to give up is a design constraint, and pretending otherwise wastes everybody's effort.

Agree in writing how lighting changes proposed during the work will be raised, recorded and reflected in the drawings before anything is altered on site.

A fitting position moved verbally on site is easily lost, so ask the electrician to confirm any change back to you before a ceiling is closed up.

Keep one running note of lighting decisions, so a question about a switch or a fitting position months later can be answered from the page instead of the argument.

A single record is the simplest possible protection against a decision being quietly reversed by whoever is on site that morning.