Daniel Blitzer on How to Light Homes
Daniel Blitzer
Daniel Blitzer will teach NYSID’s new Certificate Program: The Fundamentals of Residential Lighting for design professionals and home design enthusiasts.
Classes Begin Feb 15 through the ICPS.
“Once people become engaged with lighting, they never give it up.” says Daniel Blitzer. “It captivates them for the rest of their lives.” Blitzer should know. He has been teaching and writing about lighting for more than thirty years, and it has become his lifelong profession and passion.
Well known in the New York and national lighting communities, Dan has served for 16 years as Principal Faculty, teaching at the Philips Lighting Application Center; has written Introduction to Lighting, a video course for the Illuminating Engineering Society, The Residential Lighting Manual for the American Lighting Association; and has presented at both LightFair and LEDucation. Dan serves on the Advisory Board of the Next Generation Lighting Systems program, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy, The IES, and The International Association of Lighting Designers. He is a board member and past President of the Designers Lighting Forum of New York, board member of the Nuckolls Fund for Lighting Education, and a Fellow of the IES. Through NYSID’s ICPS (Institute for Continuing and Professional Studies), Blitzer will be teaching a new Certificate Program in the Fundamentals of Residential Lighting. It consists of an introductory session (on Feb 15) followed by a three-course sequence: “Tools for Lighting in the Home,” which covers light sources, fixtures, and controls; “Different Light for Different Rooms”, which looks at techniques for social, working, and viewing spaces; and “Sustainability, Wellness, and Economics in Today’s Lighting.” You earn a certification upon completion, and this certificate carries CEU’s from the IDCEC and LU’s from the AIA for design professionals. Blitzer shares a bit of his knowledge here.
NYSID: How should an interior designer or home owner begin the process of considering lighting for a residence? What are the fundamentals?
Daniel Blitzer: Lighting, like other aspects of design, follows a standard path: understanding the client’s objectives, the activities in the home, and the physical and environmental constraints is the first step. With this information, the designer or home owner needs to develop a concept for how the home should look (and function) and how it should be lighted; the selection and placement of lighting equipment comes later.
From a fundamentals perspective, people new to lighting need to grasp how light interacts with materials, notably their color and texture. From a technical perspective, people need to know how to choose the distribution of light and how that affects the people, objects and surfaces in the space. Do you want light to come down from the ceiling, or out from the middle of the room? Do you want the light to be soft or have a hard edge? Once you are comfortable with these issues, you can begin to understand how you want a space to appear, and the specific equipment you would choose for the lighting effects you want to have.
From an application perspective in the second course of the sequence, we are going to light different rooms according to their primary activity or function: a social space, such as a living or dining room; a working space, such as a kitchen; or a viewing space with art or architectural design on the wall? Each of these functions require different lighting strategies and tools, which can be applied and combined in the wide variety of spaces in a home or commercial space, for that matter.
NYSID: What are some things consumers should keep in mind as they pick out a lightbulb for a specific use?
DB: You must think about the effect you want and the function of the space before purchasing the bulb. You need to know what color the light will be: will it be warm or will it be cool? Will I find it too mushy, too stark, or too glary?
If I were looking for a lightbulb, I would also want to know how much light it gives. For decades, we measured the quantity of light in terms of the wattage. That does not tell us how much light a bulb gives, but rather, how much power it uses and ultimately how much it’s going to cost us. With today’s packaging, we can evaluate the light output by looking at the lumen rating. Of course, we will explain lumen and other important terms in the course sequence. If I am installing this lightbulb at the top of a 12 ft. ceiling, will the light go where you want it to go? If you are installing it in front of a glass cabinet, will it work or will it create a harsh reflection on the cabinet door, for example?
NYSID: When a product claims to be like “daylight,” what does that mean?
Daylight, natural daylight, supports wellness. Most of us don’t get enough of it because we spend so much time indoors. But, so-called “daylight” light bulbs do not provide an adequate substitute. “Daylight” and “natural” have such positive associations that we likely don’t realize that “daylight” bulbs often make a space feel cool and drab. We will explore this and other ways that you can better envision the effects of a light before purchasing.
NYSID: What will students actually do in the courses?
DB: Each of the sessions runs two and a half hours, and the introductory course is 5 hours, so there will be a lecture and, importantly, an activity component. Students will be asked to do a considerable amount of observation and evaluation on their own. The most important thing to learn in lighting is how to see what light does in the world around you. Students will get assignments to identify and assess the lighting in their home, to tune their eyes to look at light. They will determine how well bulbs, fixtures and controls are working, or not working, in their homes and spaces they work or play in.
They will go online to buy a lightbulb for a specific space with a specific function. They will also do some sketching of spaces in their homes, and make a plan to alter those rooms with the lighting tools and technologies covered in the course.
NYSID: What can students expect to take away from theCertificate Program in the Fundamentals of Residential Lighting?
DB: My hope is that interior designers would come away from this course with an understanding of the power of light in residences, and that this knowledge will make lighting a focus of their designs from the inception. It will give interior designers the language and vision to work with lighting professionals, and also the ability to communicate with their clients about lighting and solve lighting problems for smaller residential projects with more limited budgets. There has been a seachange in lighting tools and technologies in recent years, and this course is a great way to get up to date on what’s possible.
I think interior designers who take this course will come away with a deep appreciation for lighting, and want to hire lighting designers for their more well-heeled clients and to learn from that incredible collaborative process. This is not a program to turn you into an architectural lighting designer. For that, you need a more extensive education (such as NYSID’s Master of Professional Studies in Lighting Design). It’s just a semester-long program so it won’t teach you everything you need to know, but it will help you to see lighting better. And of course, you take from the program a certification.
For people who are not interior designers and are just interested in lighting design, this is an ideal place to become more interested. This course will open up a new way of envisioning lighting in your home, and other residences.
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