Edinburgh Napier University

  Lighting Education for Non-Specialists:

How does anyone end up working as a lighting designer? We have all discovered the joy of lighting design through different routes. When friends in kindergarten wanted to be firemen and astronauts, I did not say I wanted to be a lighting designer. At primary school, I wanted to drive lifeboats until I realised that you volunteered for that and did not get paid. As a teenager, I wanted to be an artist and decided to go to Art College to study art. I did not know I wanted to be a lighting designer, because I had never heard of lighting design. The story is similar for most people working in lighting design, they discover lighting accidentally whilst studying something else.

At Edinburgh Napier University, I teach a 15 week lighting module to students on the Interior & Spatial Design course. The students did not come to university to study lighting, but I know how their effective use of space, materials and colour can be greatly enhanced with an understanding of light. Their first language may be Interior Design, but learning about Light can make them better designers.