Room-by-Room Lighting Record Checklist

Use the same headings for every room so the sheets can be read side by side, rather than writing more about the rooms you happen to care about most.

Uneven records send a professional straight to the rooms you already understand and away from the ones that need attention.

Give each room one name and use it everywhere, including on photographs, since households often use two names for the same space without noticing.

Two names for one room produces duplicated and contradictory notes that nobody can reconcile later.

Keep what exists and what you want on separate parts of the sheet, so the record of the property stays clean and can be trusted.

Records that mix observation with preference lose their value the moment somebody needs to know what is actually there.

Note when each sheet was filled in, because a property being worked on changes and an undated record cannot be trusted afterwards.

Notes made either side of an alteration look identical unless something on the page says when they were written.

Write down explicitly what you could not see or reach in each room, rather than leaving the space blank as though nothing was there.

A blank reads as nothing present, while a note saying it could not be seen reads as a question, which is what it actually is.

Keep the sheets, the photographs and the sketches for one room together, so that nothing has to be matched up from memory later.

Material that has to be reassembled before it can be used is rarely used at all.

Record how many fixed light fittings each room has and roughly where each sits in relation to the doors, the window and the furniture.

Position relative to what people use matters far more than position relative to the middle of the ceiling.

Describe each fitting in plain words such as a ceiling fitting, a wall light or a strip under a cupboard, without attempting to classify it further.

Plain descriptions are reliable, and a professional would rather have an accurate ordinary word than a confidently wrong technical one.

Photograph each room both with the lights off in daylight and with them on after dark, from the same position each time.

The pair of photographs shows what the fittings actually do, which no description of the fittings themselves conveys.

Note any fitting that does not work, flickers or behaves oddly, and record it as an observation to raise rather than something to investigate yourself.

Anything that flickers, fails intermittently or behaves unexpectedly should be looked at by a suitably qualified electrician before further use.

Photograph the lamp in each fitting before anything is changed, including any marking visible on it, so the information exists if it is needed.

This detail becomes surprisingly hard to recover once a fitting has been taken down, and it takes moments to capture now.

Record which outlets in each room are permanently occupied by a lamp, since those positions are effectively part of the lighting arrangement.

An outlet used by a floor lamp for a decade is a lighting position, and it disappears from the record if only fixed fittings are counted.

Split each room sheet into morning, afternoon, evening and late use, and write what happens in the room during each of those periods.

Rooms that seem straightforward often turn out to carry three unrelated activities once the periods are separated.

Note who uses each room at each period, since a room used by one person late is a different problem from a room used by everyone at once.

Occupancy shapes both the amount of light wanted and how the controls need to work.

Record any activity in the room that involves looking closely at something, and note exactly where in the room the person sits or stands to do it.

The position matters more than the activity, because the light has to arrive at a particular place from a particular direction.

Note which rooms are used deliberately with very little light, such as for watching something on a screen, and how that is currently achieved.

Rooms with a low-light mode need it planned for, and owners often forget to mention it because it seems obvious to them.

Record any room whose use has changed since the lighting was last arranged, and say what it was originally set up for.

Mismatched lighting almost always traces back to a change of use that nobody revisited the lighting for.

Note any room whose use is expected to change, and write down both the current use and the anticipated one on the same sheet.

Recording both lets a professional weigh what to allow for rather than being told about the change after decisions are fixed.

Work through every switch in the property one at a time and write down exactly what each one does, including anything it affects in another room.

Households routinely believe a switch does something it does not, and the survey is the easiest moment to correct that.

Record where several fittings come on together and whether you ever want only some of them, since that is a decision available to you now.

Groupings inherited from a previous arrangement rarely match how the room is used today.

Note any switch whose purpose you cannot identify, and photograph it in position rather than assuming it does nothing.

Unexplained switches usually do something, and finding out what before work begins avoids losing it silently.

Record where the same light can be operated from two positions, since those arrangements are easy to lose and awkward to notice missing.

Nobody misses this until the first evening in the new arrangement, by which point restoring it is disruptive.

Note any control in one room that governs a light in another, and mark both ends of the relationship on the two room sheets.

Cross-room relationships live in nobody's memory and vanish completely when a property is stripped.

Record where a light can already be dimmed, and note whether it dims smoothly, buzzes or behaves differently with different lamps.

Whether a lamp, fitting and control work properly together is a matter for the supplier and a suitably qualified electrician to confirm.

Note where a ceiling slopes, steps down or is noticeably lower than the rest of the property, and mark it on the room sketch.

Ceiling shape governs what is possible overhead, and it is far easier to record now than to describe from memory later.

Record any beam, boxing or bulkhead crossing a ceiling, and note whether you know what is inside it or are guessing.

Boxed sections often carry services, and marking your uncertainty honestly is more useful than a confident assumption.

What sits inside a boxed section or above a ceiling cannot be established by looking and must be investigated by suitably qualified professionals.

Note visible evidence of past alterations, such as filled holes, mismatched paintwork or fittings that clearly replaced something else.

Traces of earlier work tell a professional where to expect surprises, and they are obvious to whoever lives there.

Record where any access hatch is, whether you have ever opened it, and photograph anything visible from the opening without entering.

Entering a loft or void to look at anything is not an owner task, and whatever is up there must be assessed by qualified professionals.

Note the finish and apparent condition of each ceiling as you see it, including any staining, cracking or sagging, and photograph it.

Any staining, cracking or movement in a ceiling should be assessed by a qualified professional rather than judged from a photograph.

Note what is directly above and below each room, since that governs what can be reached from where and is easy to state on the sheet.

A professional works this out from a plan eventually, but having it written down saves the whole first visit doing so.

Give the stairs and each landing their own sheet, recording how they are lit now and from where that lighting is switched.

Stairs are used more often than most rooms and are usually described in a single line, if at all.

How stairs and changes of level should be lit is a matter for suitably qualified professionals working to the requirements that apply locally.

Record how the entrance is lit both from inside and from outside, and what you can see when you arrive at the door after dark.

The arrival sequence crosses the boundary between inside and outside, which is exactly why it falls out of both surveys.

Note every cupboard, wardrobe and store you have to search in the dark, including the ones you have simply learned to live with.

Owners stop noticing these entirely, yet they are among the simplest complaints to put right if they are raised early.

Record how any utility space, boiler cupboard or service cupboard is lit, and whether anyone can see properly when working there.

These spaces are visited rarely and usually in a hurry, often with both hands full and nothing to spare for finding a switch.

Note any corridor or passage without daylight, how it is lit today and whether the light is ever left on because it is unpleasant otherwise.

Windowless circulation is in use whenever anyone is at home, and a scheme that ignores it tends to leave a bright strip through the middle of the property.

Record every external door and threshold, how it is lit and whether anyone regularly uses it after dark carrying something.

Lighting at external doors and thresholds involves requirements that vary by location and must be confirmed locally with a qualified professional.

Put a simple sketch on every room sheet showing the doors, the window positions and where the furniture sits, however rough it looks.

A rough sketch anchors every other note on the page, and its roughness has never stopped anyone from using it.

Include something familiar in each photograph so that heights and distances can be judged roughly by anyone looking at it later.

Photographs without any reference are almost impossible to interpret once you are no longer standing in the room.

Mark the entries that are questions rather than observations, so that nobody later reads your uncertainty as a statement of fact.

This distinction protects both you and the professional, and it is lost the moment the notes are retyped by someone else.

Keep one copy of the record that is not annotated during meetings, so the original observations remain available in their first form.

Working copies accumulate other people's assumptions, and eventually nobody can tell what the property was actually like.

Add a section to each sheet for what professionals tell you about that room, recorded in their words and attributed to whoever said it.

Advice about one room said in passing during a visit is the material most often lost between conversations.

Plan to add to the record at the point anything is opened up, since that is the only time some of these questions can be answered at all.

Anything revealed when a ceiling or wall is opened must be assessed by suitably qualified professionals rather than interpreted by the owner.