Lighting Brief Preparation Checklist

Write down what each room is used for once daylight has gone, in plain words, because the evening life of a room is often nothing like its daytime one.

Rooms are usually described by their name rather than their use, and the name tells a designer very little about the light needed there.

Record which rooms are still in use in the last stretch before anyone goes to bed, and how much light is wanted in them at that point.

Winding down has different needs from the rest of the evening, and it is the part owners complain about most afterwards.

Note who is up first, which lights they switch on before anyone else is awake, and whether that currently wakes the rest of the household.

Early-morning switching is a real constraint that almost never reaches a brief, and it shapes what should be separately controlled.

Record whether anyone is regularly awake when the rest are not, for shift work, a baby or illness, and trace the route they take through the property.

Those routes need light that does not disturb anyone else, and describing them is far more useful than asking for gentle lighting.

Write down which rooms nobody in the household wants brightly lit in the evening, and say who feels that most strongly.

Disagreement inside a household is normal and worth surfacing early rather than discovering it once everything is switched on.

Note the occasions each room has to cope with that are not an ordinary evening, such as a full table of people or a room cleared for something else.

Schemes designed only for ordinary evenings fail visibly on the occasions the owner cares most about.

List the complaints you already have in the words you would use to a friend, rather than translating them into a general request for better lighting.

A designer can work with the sentence about not being able to see into the back of a cupboard; they cannot work with a request for better lighting.

Note every room where somebody has added a plug-in lamp to solve something, and what that lamp is doing that the fixed lighting does not.

An added lamp is a written record of a shortfall, and it points at the exact position and job that were missed.

Record which existing lights are never switched on, and note whether that is because of the effect they give, the position of the switch or the glare.

An unused fitting is as much a fault as a missing one, and the reason it is avoided is the useful part.

Note where you switch on more light than you actually want simply because there is no way to have less in that room.

This is one of the most common complaints in existing homes and it belongs in the brief as a stated problem, not as a request for dimming.

Record whether any room is lit almost entirely by table or floor lamps because the ceiling fitting is unpleasant to sit under.

Rooms where the main fitting has been abandoned tell you something specific about what to avoid repeating.

Write down anything about the current lighting that has caused a repeated argument or complaint, however small it seems on paper.

Recurring friction is a stronger signal than a considered opinion, and it is usually about control rather than about the fitting.

List the fittings you intend to keep and where each one currently sits, since anything fixed changes what can sensibly be proposed around it.

Keepers are usually mentioned late and casually, by which point a scheme has already been drawn around their absence.

Note which keepers are sentimental or inherited, so their position is treated as a firm constraint rather than as one preference among many.

A designer will happily plan around a fixed point, but only if it is presented as fixed rather than as something you quite like.

Record any fitting whose replacement parts or lamps you have never had to source, and add finding that out to your list of open questions.

A fitting you cannot re-lamp becomes a problem long after the project, and the answer usually sits with the maker or a supplier.

Whether a particular lamp or component remains available is a question for the maker or supplier, not something to assume from what is fitted now.

Note the portable lamps you genuinely use, where their cables currently run, and whether anyone trips over or unplugs them.

Portable lighting that is here to stay deserves to be planned for rather than quietly designed out and then reintroduced.

Record whether any existing fitting is on a control nobody in the household understands, and photograph the control before anything changes.

Undocumented controls are common in homes that have been altered more than once, and they are easiest to unpick before work starts.

Note any fitting you dislike but have kept for a reason outside your control, and raise the reason as something to confirm rather than to solve yourself.

Where a property carries restrictions on what may be altered, what applies must be confirmed locally with the relevant authority and a qualified professional.

Write down which rooms are inside this conversation and which are explicitly outside it, including the ones you are undecided about.

Undecided rooms behave differently from excluded ones, and marking them as undecided keeps the option open without inflating the brief.

Record which ceilings, walls or finishes you are not willing to have disturbed, and say why, since that shapes what is realistic in those rooms.

A recently decorated ceiling is a genuine constraint, and stating it prevents proposals that were never going to be acceptable.

Note whether this lighting sits inside a larger project, and who else is working in the same ceilings and walls at the same point.

Lighting is decided in the same ceiling void as several other things, and the brief should say what else is happening there.

How work by different trades in the same ceiling should be sequenced and coordinated is for the qualified professionals involved to establish.

Record whether anything outside the building is part of this conversation, such as an entrance, a path or a garden seen from indoors.

Outdoor lighting brings its own requirements that vary by location and must be confirmed locally with a suitably qualified electrician.

Note which parts of the brief you would let go of first if the scheme has to be reduced, and which parts you would not give up.

Stating your own order of importance keeps later reductions in your hands rather than being made for you by circumstance.

Record whether you expect the whole property to be addressed at once or in stages, and which part this first conversation is meant to cover.

Work done in stages needs decisions taken now about things that will not be touched until later, and that should be said out loud.

Avoid leaving words such as cosy, bright or restful standing alone, and write each one beside the room and the moment it applies to.

The same word means opposite things to two people, and the situation attached to it is what makes it interpretable.

Collect images you respond to and note beside each one whether it is the light you like or the room, the furniture or the view.

Owners frequently gather images of rooms they admire for reasons that have nothing to do with the lighting in them.

Mark any image whose effect clearly depends on the building being different from yours, such as a much taller ceiling or a wall of glass.

Naming this yourself saves a difficult conversation later and shows what you are actually drawn to underneath the image.

Whether an effect can be reproduced in your property depends on the building and must be assessed by suitably qualified professionals.

Record which rooms you want to feel related to one another and which you want to feel quite separate, particularly where rooms are open to each other.

In open-plan arrangements this decision has more effect on the result than the choice of any individual fitting.

Write down what you do not want as plainly as what you do, including effects you have seen elsewhere and disliked.

A clear list of dislikes narrows the field faster than a list of likes and is far easier for an owner to produce honestly.

Mark which parts of your brief are firm and which are genuinely open to advice, so a professional knows where their expertise is wanted.

A brief that reads as entirely fixed invites silence, and one that reads as entirely open invites proposals you never wanted.

List everyone who uses the property regularly, including children, visitors and anyone who comes to help, since all of them will meet the controls.

Briefs are usually written by one person for themselves, and the resulting controls make sense to nobody else.

Note whether anyone finds the existing controls hard to see, reach or understand, and pass that on as an observation rather than as a solution.

How lighting and controls should be adapted for a particular person is a matter for a qualified professional who can advise for the individual.

Record whether anyone in the household is troubled by bright light, glare or flicker, and treat that as something to raise rather than to design around yourself.

Anything relating to health, sight or comfort of a particular person should be discussed with a suitably qualified professional rather than settled from a checklist.

Note whether the household includes people of very different heights or reach, since a control or fitting that suits one may be awkward for another.

This is easy to observe at home and almost impossible for a professional to guess without being told.

Record who will be responsible for changing lamps and cleaning fittings, and note anywhere that would need more than a domestic step to reach.

Maintenance access shapes what is sensible to propose, particularly over stairwells and above tall furniture.

Safe access to anything high or over a stairwell should be discussed with a qualified professional rather than attempted on the basis of a checklist.

Note whether the property is ever used by people who do not know it, and how they are expected to find and work the lighting.

Anything a stranger cannot operate on their first evening will be reported as broken sooner or later.

Gather the brief into a single document rather than leaving it spread across messages, photographs and conversations nobody can retrieve.

Material that lives in a message thread is effectively invisible to everyone who joins the project later.

Give each room one page carrying its uses, its complaints, its keepers and anything about it you have marked as undecided.

A per-room page is the format most professionals can actually use, and it makes gaps in your own thinking obvious.

Include a rough sketch of each room with the furniture positions marked, because lighting follows furniture far more closely than it follows walls.

A plan without furniture invites a symmetrical arrangement of fittings that suits nobody sitting in the room.

State plainly which entries are requirements and which are aspirations, rather than presenting the whole brief at one level of insistence.

Everything written in the same tone gets treated as equally negotiable, which is rarely what the owner intended.

Ask what else the professional wants from you before their first visit, and add whatever they name to your document.

Different professionals ask for quite different material, and asking first avoids preparing the wrong things thoroughly.

Agree in writing how changes to the brief will be recorded once it has been handed over, and who keeps the current version.

Lighting briefs change constantly during a project, and undocumented changes are where most later disagreements begin.