JHA is currently working on a rather large design project and the hot item of the day has been the budget - how much over our original number we are and what can we cut.. Jessica and I had a conversation last night where we both exhaled a huge sigh of relief in that we did the lighting first and some would say out of order.

It’s interesting to think about the order of design elements in the building/purchasing process… so often some of the most important elements get left out in the cold becasue there just isn’t any money left at the end of the day for them.  One of the hardest hit design elements is Lighting. There are two rationals one can take.. either adopting the notion that a contractor puts in generic lighting so that the home-owner can replace fixtures personalizing their space or more often and probably more true, proper allowences were not made in most areas of the building process and so money gets borrowed from one catagory leaving the last men standing with no budget to speak of..

The Lunaria storefront for us was a revelation!  In this project i speak of, the lights will be fabulous, they will make the rooms and the home unique and wonderful! We reversed the order and considered the lights part of the architecture and so thankfully we wont have the problem many large project do!

And so we thought, jessica and I, that we should share this notion… We encourage you as a designer or a homeowner to put appropriate weight on lighting! get it right and make is special! becasue if you don’t do it when you are in the design process it’s highly unlikely you will change things up once you move in any time soon.