The Light in Our Homes

by Ilo Tarrant

I have a vivid memory of staying the night at my grandmother’s house in South County Dublin. I, being a typical kid, stayed up much too late watching tv and eating snacks. When it was time to go to bed, I switched off the light in the living room and clumsily felt my way to the spare room through the darkened hallway. As I struggled to find my way, the sconce across the hall switched on, as if by magic. I looked around, but there was no one else awake. The sconce had an old fashioned string switch at the base, so there was no chance I could have turned it on without realizing it. In my childlike magical thinking I thought, maybe it was a message from my grandfather, who we had lost over a decade previously. I think the reality was that it was an old house and the wiring was beginning to falter. In any case, that ugly, malfunctioning sconce made me feel a sense of security that I didn’t think could be generated by a simple light fixture.

It was a simple bulb covered by a milky glass shade, installed in the 80's when my grandparents famously decided to be their own architects. And even still, it was so… Nana. I think if that sconce could speak, at least to me, it would say a simple: this is your Nana’s house. There's soup on the stove and talk radio playing too loudly in the background. Now that she's gone and there is another family living in her house, I find myself missing those distinctive, ugly 80’s light fixtures and the warm yellow glow that lit the way past bedtime. There’s a strange beauty to what I used to write off as tacky.

So how do I, a forever renting millennial, create the same sense of place in my little Brooklyn apartment? How do I personalize my living space with my own unique brand of… what my future grandchildren may call ‘tacky?’ You would think that someone who works as a professional lighting designer might feel at ease with this task, but even for me, the answer is complicated. For most of us, opening the walls to confront decades old wiring and hardwire a pendant light over our dining table is simply not an option. I can sense the disappointment of friends when I can’t answer their lighting questions with a one-word answer, or simply send them to the good home lighting store. And lighting, with all its power to transform a space and bring people together, can be an intimidating task to get started on.

Our team at The SEED has been discussing how to make lighting within the home more approachable, so we are taking this opportunity to begin a conversation around methods we can all use, no matter your level of experience or understanding of lighting design. First and foremost is to remind you that you intuitively know more about lighting design than you think. In the morning and evening, the sun is warm, dim and low in the sky, but at mid- day, the sun emits a brighter, cooler light from above. By simply taking cues from nature and applying them to your home, you can begin to create the sense of warmth and ambience to enjoy now and look back upon fondly. Over the next few issues of InSitu, we will begin to unpack lighting for the home into small, digestible bites. Our goal is to inspire and empower you to light your home with intent, in a way that creates ambience, a sense of comfort and reflects who you are, for generations to come.  

By Ilo Tarrant

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