Light Is Everything: How Not to Ruin Your Renovation at the Last Minute

When people plan a renovation, they argue about tiles, pick a wall colour from twenty almost identical shades and spend weeks hunting for the perfect sofa. Light fittings, on the other hand, are often bought at the last minute, in one evening, from a picture online and on the principle of “let’s take these, they’re cheaper”.

And this is exactly where it is easy to lose everything that months of work and hundreds of thousands of crowns went into. We only ever see an interior the way light shows it to us. A cheap bulb turns oak parquet yellow and makes an elegant grey-beige wall look dirty. Textured plaster that you paid extra for becomes an ordinary painted wall under flat light. Colours the designer matched to each other start to clash. The design is technically there, but it does not read.

To avoid this, you need good-quality light. And that is not the same thing as a beautiful chandelier.

What good-quality light is

You hardly notice good light. You do not see glaring dots on the ceiling, you do not squint and you do not get tired. You simply see a beautiful room. This is what it is made of:

Light like this comes at a price: good diffusers, quality LEDs and flicker-free drivers cost more than mass-market fittings. But it is the investment that protects the rest of your renovation budget.

One chandelier and a scatter of spotlights: the most common mistakes

A typical scenario: a single chandelier, chosen from a photo, hangs in the middle of the living room. The centre of the room is flooded with light while the corners with the armchair and the shelf sink into shadow. Another version: spotlights placed in a grid or “wherever they ended up”. They have a narrow beam, so there is a bright spot under each one and dimness in between.

Two lighting modes: for tasks and for mood

When we design lighting, we always plan two modes.

Decorative lighting is an art of its own, essentially painting the interior with light. You need to choose the right LED strip and mount it in a particular way so that the light spreads softly across the surface in a smooth gradient. Done carelessly, instead of a gentle glow you get a harsh bright line or visible LED dots, and the whole effect is lost.

In the evening you switch on only the decorative lighting, and the living room becomes a place to unwind. Need to work or cook dinner? Add the functional light. One room lives in two modes.

Light affects how you feel, too

The body’s internal clock is set by light. During the day we need plenty of bright light, ideally daylight, and in the evening soft, warm light. Cold white light in the evening suppresses melatonin, the sleep hormone, noticeably more, which is why it can be hard to fall asleep after an evening under “office” lamps. In Czechia it gets dark early in winter, so do not block the windows with heavy curtains and tall furniture.

How we design lighting

When we design an interior, we give lighting as much attention as the layout and materials. Light is not added at the end; it is designed together with everything else.

This has to be done before the renovation starts. For the ceiling to glow as one even surface, fittings, light profiles and cables are planned in at the rough-work stage, together with the ceiling structure. Adding them after the finishing work almost always means taking apart a finished ceiling. An electrician will run cables wherever you tell them, but thinking about how the room will look in the evening is not their job. That is why the project marks everything in advance: where each fitting goes, which circuit it is on, where the switches and night lights are.