david k warfel
Of all the moments of discovery, connection, and understanding provided at LightFair this year, none stirred my emotions or challenged my thinking as deeply as the fifty minutes allotted to the Light + Justice conference session. Led by Edward Bartholomew, Mark Loeffler, and Lya S. Osborn, the presentation shook up my thinking and clarified my focus.... Continue Reading →
One of my writing goals is to simplify the scientific and technical aspects of light into actionable advice, and the Don’t/Do This series is perhaps the most aligned with this purpose. The intent is to provide a simple list of strategies to utilize in a home, space by space, alongside pitfalls to avoid. Sounds easy, right? Working... Continue Reading →
The fifth article in my series exploring the past, present, and future of lighting at home has just been published in Designing Lighting magazine. Too often, point-by-point lighting calculations, sometimes called heat maps, are used to justify a lighting proposal of recessed downlights. This is the same method used for gas station canopies, but homeowners... Continue Reading →
Of all five (or six?) of the promises of light, light that helps us Do Better is the one most of us think we know. It doesn’t take a lighting designer to understand that, if we want to read a magazine, we need a light on it. Does it really matter if it comes from a... Continue Reading →
Throughout high school and much of my undergraduate education, light was a toy to me. I loved lighting musicals and concerts and adding to the lighting rig of my DJ business. I thought of lighting as a hobby, merely something I did in my free time, and not as a career. Sometime in my junior... Continue Reading →
Recently our team delivered a continuing education webinar on layers of light for residential and hospitality spaces, a session I have led many times. Each time I revisit the material and update the presentation based on what I have learned since the previous outing. While preparing for this latest offering, I made a new mental connection... Continue Reading →
A few years ago I wrote a post on the do’s and don’ts of front porch lighting. So why do it again? Because I never stop learning about light, and that means every few years I might make different recommendations. That is certainly true outdoors as I learn more about the negative effects of light at night (LAN). This... Continue Reading →
It does not take long for someone like me to second-guess a blog series. About two posts, apparently. This, my third post in an auto-biographical series exploring my personal and professional journey in light, comes with the same doubt as each of the previous. Why would anyone want to read about my life? But perhaps... Continue Reading →
Periodically my obsession with Red Velvet cake (or Waldorf Astoria Cake, as it is sometimes known) leaves the safety of my personal life and comes across the border into my work. A few years ago, struggling to explain the value of layers of light in ways that would make it easy remember, I realized that... Continue Reading →
My desire to revisit the do’s and don’ts of lighting is going to kill me, but I am having too much fun to stop. These posts take the longest to create of any I have previously written, but sketching is so relaxing that I look forward to the next one. So here it is, the... Continue Reading →
the language of light 