Practical guides and ideas on architectural lighting — from lumen calculations to creating the perfect atmosphere with light.
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A colleague asks if you are feeling all right. You slept fine. You just look grey on camera and you have no idea why. It is almost never the webcam, it is the window behind you. Ask an ergonomist where to put a desk and they say the window belongs to your side. Ask anyone who works in video and they say it belongs in front of you. Both are right, and your desk has to do both jobs.
August 22, 2026
Most dining room pendants are hung too high, usually by about a hand's width. It sounds trivial. It is not. A practical guide to the one measurement that decides whether a dining room works, how to size the fixture to your table, and the three layers that have to sit around the pendant.
August 20, 2026
A garden at night is not a darker version of the garden at noon. It is a different place entirely. Whatever you light becomes the composition, and everything you leave alone disappears. A guide to the techniques, the technical spine that makes them work outdoors, and what all that light does to the living material you are pointing it at.
August 19, 2026
A building has two designs. One is what the architect drew for daylight. The other only exists after dark, and almost nobody draws it with the same care. A guide to facade lighting: grazing versus washing, mounting distance, lighting glass, and the outdoor rules that turn out to be less about how bright your building is than about how much light is allowed to leave it.
August 18, 2026
Cove lighting is the only lighting technique judged entirely by what you cannot see. It succeeds when the room glows and nobody can locate the source, and fails the instant someone spots the strip. A guide to why the published dimensions contradict each other, the classical detailing principles, strip selection and the coordination problems that catch people out.
August 17, 2026
Lie back in a dental chair and there is nowhere to look but up. For the length of the appointment, the ceiling is the patient's entire visual field. A practical guide to dental practice lighting: the medical device boundary, glare from the supine position, shade matching, and a full design checklist.
August 14, 2026
Every colourist knows the moment. The client loves the colour at the chair, walks out, catches her reflection in a shop window, and the tone is not what she just approved. The hair has not changed. The light has. A practical guide to salon lighting: EU and US standards, CRI and R9, mirror geometry, daylight, and a specification checklist.
August 13, 2026
Supermarket lighting is the only branch of retail design where the specification has a food safety dimension, a shelf life dimension, and increasingly a legal one. A complete guide to lux levels, vertical illuminance on shelving, colour temperature by fresh food department, the R9 problem, and the line between good presentation and deception.
August 11, 2026
Search for recessed lighting spacing and you will find four or five different formulas, all claiming to be the standard. There is a real formula behind all of them. Here is how downlight spacing actually works, and how to lay out a ceiling without guessing.
August 10, 2026
The bathroom is the only room in a house where lighting design and electrical safety are the same conversation. A complete guide to IP zones, why overhead vanity lights cast shadows, correct mirror sconce heights, and the mistakes that ruin bathrooms.
August 6, 2026
The living room is the hardest room in a house to light well, because it has no single job. A complete guide to the four layers, lux levels, lamp heights, TV glare, and the scenes that make a room work at every hour of the evening.
August 4, 2026
A complete guide to lumens vs watts, including a full conversion chart, luminous efficacy explained, how to calculate the lumens a room actually needs, and why wattage equivalence labels are unreliable.
July 31, 2026
A professional specification guide to gym and fitness center lighting design. Learn how to optimize lux levels, CCT, and CRI for every zone of a commercial facility to enhance safety, performance, and member experience.
July 29, 2026
Master the art of modern kitchen lighting. This complete guide reveals how to expertly layer ambient, task, and accent lighting to create a highly functional, luxurious architectural space.
July 28, 2026
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A lighting guide to mastering hotel lobby lighting. Learn how to combine ambient, accent, task, and decorative layers to create a calm, considered, and premium first impression for your guests.
July 24, 2026
Discover expert architectural lighting strategies for bakeries. Learn how to choose color temperature, CRI, and accent lighting to boost sales and aesthetics.
July 20, 2026
Discover how circadian lighting, dim-to-warm technology, glare control, and layered illumination can help create healthier residential bedrooms for better sleep.
July 16, 2026
Restaurant lighting design shapes food perception, dwell time, and spend. Learn the CRI, beam angle, and dimming-control principles hospitality designers specify.
July 14, 2026
July 8, 2026
Low ceilings don't have to feel cramped. Four lighting techniques - wall-washing, indirect uplighting, and ultra-shallow fixtures - that make apartments feel taller and more open.
July 7, 2026
Discover how strategic office lighting design boosts employee productivity and wellbeing through five real-world case studies.
July 7, 2026
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Discover how luxury brands use architectural retail lighting design to elevate product perception, direct foot traffic, and enhance the customer journey.
July 2, 2026
The Archlior blog is a practical, vendor-neutral resource for anyone specifying or thinking about lighting — covering hospitality settings like hotel lobbies and restaurants, retail and boutique environments, workplace and kitchen lighting, and the technical fundamentals that underpin good design, such as lumen calculations, color temperature, and CRI.
Each guide is written to be immediately useful: practical rules of thumb, real fixture recommendations, and the reasoning behind them, rather than abstract theory. The library continues to grow, including deeper dives into emerging topics like AI-assisted lighting visualization.