Portable and Plug-In Lighting Planning Checklist

Gather every lamp in the property, including any in storage, photograph them together and note which the household intends to keep using.

A photograph of the actual lamps is a lighting brief, and it is more accurate than any list of what people think they have.

Note what each lamp is actually used for — reading, a corner, a side table, ambient light in the evening — rather than what it was bought for.

Use tends to drift over the years, and how a lamp is used now is what determines where it needs to be.

Write down which lamps the household expects to replace, roughly what would replace each of them, and whether the replacement is larger or taller.

A lamp being replaced by something much larger or with a different cable position changes where the socket has to be.

Note how each lamp is switched at present — a switch on the cable, on the body, at the socket, or not conveniently at all.

How a lamp is switched decides whether it actually gets used in a room where the wall switch is by the door.

Note whether each lamp's cable currently reaches where it needs to without an extension, and which ones are already on an extension.

An extension in use today is a socket that is in the wrong place, and it is the clearest evidence available.

Write down where in the property somebody has said there is not enough light, and whether a lamp could answer it.

Some of the fixed lighting brief is really a lamp brief, and separating the two is worth doing before either is settled.

Mark on a rough furniture plan of each room where every lamp would stand, and which piece of furniture it stands on or beside.

Lamp positions that are not tied to furniture positions are guesses, and this is what makes them concrete.

Note which pieces of furniture are definitely staying, which are being replaced, and which positions in the room are still genuinely open.

A socket placed for furniture that has not been chosen is a socket that ends up behind the wrong thing.

Note every lamp that would stand away from a wall — beside a sofa in a room, on a table in the middle, beside a bed that floats.

These are the positions that produce trailing cables and are the reason floor outlets get discussed at all.

Write down any lamp or plug-in light only used at certain times of year, and where it would stand when it is.

Occasional lighting still needs a socket in the right place, and it is invariably left out of the conversation.

Note any lamp in a hall, landing or stairway, and where it stands relative to the route people walk.

Circulation spaces have the fewest sockets and the most reason for a cable to cross a walked route.

Sit in each room in the evening with the current arrangement and note where you wish there was light and where there is too much.

The evening in the actual room is the only reliable test, and it costs nothing to do before anything is decided.

For each lamp position, note where the cable would have to run to reach a socket, and mark any route that crosses a walked floor.

Marking the crossing routes turns a vague worry about trailing cables into a short and specific list.

Note each position where a socket in the floor would be the only way to avoid a cable crossing the room, and mark it on the plan.

Floor outlets have to be decided long before a floor is laid, which is why this list has an early deadline.

Whether a floor outlet is possible or appropriate in any position is for a qualified electrician to establish, and what applies must be confirmed locally.

Note which sockets would end up behind a sofa, a bed or a unit, and whether anything would ever need to be unplugged there.

A socket that cannot be reached is a socket that gets an extension run from it, which defeats the whole exercise.

Note how many things would be plugged in at each position, including anything other than a lamp that lives on the same table.

Lamp positions are almost never lamp-only, and counting what shares the socket is part of getting the number right.

Ask at which point socket positions stop being changeable, and put that date against your own list of decisions.

This deadline is usually earlier than owners expect and is the reason the lamp layer gets left out entirely.

Take the marked plan and the list of lamp positions to the qualified electrician rather than describing it in conversation.

A marked plan is something they can work from; a description of intentions is something they have to interpret.

For each room, decide what should come on when somebody walks in and switches on at the door, and whether any lamp is part of that.

This is the single most useful sentence to give an electrician about the lamp layer of a room.

Note which lamps are switched on every evening without exception, since those are the candidates for switching from the wall.

A lamp used daily and switched at the lamp is the one that ends up left on or never used.

Ask the qualified electrician what options exist for having a socket controlled from a wall switch, and record what they say.

This is their subject and the arrangements available depend on the installation, so it is a question rather than a choice.

How any socket or switching arrangement is provided is determined by a qualified electrician for the specific installation.

Note where somebody would be standing when they wanted each lamp on, since that is where the switch has to be reachable from.

Switch position is decided by where people are, not by where the lamp is, and that is easy to state and easy to forget.

Note for each bedroom what somebody would want to switch off from the bed, and whether any lamp is part of that.

The bedroom is the room where this matters most and where the answer is most often decided by whoever wires it.

Write down any lamp the household controls in some other way, and raise it in the same conversation rather than separately.

Anything with its own control arrangement still has socket and switching consequences, so it belongs in this list.

Walk the property and list everything currently plugged in that nobody has touched for a long time, and note where each one is.

This is an accurate picture of how sockets are really used, and it is completely different from how they are planned.

Note where several things are sharing one socket through an adaptor or a block, and what each of those things is.

An overloaded position today is a socket count that was wrong, and it shows exactly where more provision is needed.

Any question about how much can be connected at one point is for a qualified electrician; do not resolve it by adding adaptors.

Note which things genuinely have to be unplugged or reached regularly, and make sure those positions are not planned behind furniture.

Separating what needs reaching from what does not is how the accessible socket positions get allocated sensibly.

Note where phones, devices and everyday items are actually charged in each room, and whether that position was ever planned.

Charging happens wherever a socket is convenient, and it is one of the biggest changes in how rooms are used.

Check the proposed furniture layout against the existing sockets in each room and note which of them would become unreachable once the room is furnished.

A layout change can render a whole wall of sockets useless, which is easy to spot on a plan and invisible afterwards.

Write down anything plugged in only at certain times of year and where it needs to be when it is.

Seasonal items compete for the same sockets as everything else and are never counted when the number is decided.

Ask which lighting and socket decisions close at which stage, and write your own list of decisions against those stages.

Knowing the deadline for each decision is what stops the lamp layer being the thing nobody got round to.

Bring the photographs of the actual lamps to the lighting or electrical conversation rather than describing them from memory in the meeting.

A designer or electrician responds very differently to the objects than to a general statement about using lamps.

Ask for socket and switch positions to be marked on the bare wall so you can stand in the room and look at them with the furniture plan in hand.

Positions read completely differently on a wall than on a drawing, and standing in the room finds the wrong ones.

Positions for electrical points are set by the qualified electrician; use the marks to ask questions rather than to give instructions.

Check every marked position against the furniture plan, and say straight away where a socket would end up behind something.

This check takes a few minutes in an empty room and is impossible once the walls are closed and the room is furnished.

Photograph the marked positions before anything is covered, with a door frame or corner in shot so they can be located later.

This record is useful for the rest of the project and for every future occasion when something is fixed to a wall.

Never treat your own photographs as evidence of what is behind a surface; ask a qualified professional before fixing into any wall or floor.

Write down which sockets are switched, which are floor outlets and what each was planned for, and keep it with the property records.

Nobody else will remember what a particular switched socket was for, and the information is easy to keep and impossible to reconstruct.

Note which lamp positions only work because a particular piece of furniture stands exactly where it does, and mark those as the ones a rearrangement would break.

A lamp position tied to one chair is a position that fails the first time somebody moves the room around, which happens far sooner than rewiring does.

Ask the qualified electrician which of the marked positions would still be useful if the furniture were arranged the other way round, and say how likely that is.

Sockets placed for one layout and useless in another are the usual reason an extension lead appears not long after the work has been finished.

Note any job currently being asked of a fixed fitting that a lamp you already own could do instead, and raise it before the fixed lighting is settled.

Some of what gets specified as fixed light is answered better by something the household already has, and nobody finds that out unless the two lists meet.

Walk the room you live in now and note the route each cable actually takes, across a floor, under a rug, behind a door or along a skirting.

Where cables have ended up in practice is a far better guide to what the finished room needs than where anybody intended them to run.

Write down where a lamp has been moved from since the room was last arranged, and what caused the move, whether a new chair, a screen or somebody working there.

Each of those moves is a socket that was in the wrong place, and together they describe how this household actually rearranges a room.

Gather these observations before asking anybody about altering the installation, so the conversation starts from what the room does rather than from a solution you have picked.

An electrician given the room's behaviour can suggest something you had not thought of; one given a proposal can only price it or refuse it.

Never extend a circuit, add wiring or alter an installation yourself. Any change is work for a qualified electrician, and what applies must be confirmed locally.