Why get help with lighting design?
The truth is that most house plans do not include a well thought out lighting design. Good lighting design is a function of needs and requirements, and because most homes are designed with a generic customer in mind, the lighting design is boiler plate and often flawed. Unfortunately, as a result, many home owners get involved in a light fixture selection process and place the fixtures in locations where they do not exactly belong. The most glaring example of this situation, with which we are all familiar, is the ceiling fixture in the middle of a bedroom. Electricians can also exacerbate the muddle by applying their own formulas for fixture location if no direction is given.
A local resourse
It makes a lot sense to get lighting design help early in the process. Energy Plus Lighting, a wholesale showroom, can help with lighting design and fixture selection. They have showrooms in Santa Rosa and Napa. Owners, Jerry and Linda Hanrahan and their team offer expertize and customer service. Linda specializes in lighting design and Jerry specializes in home automation and lighting controls, as well as Audio Visual systems.
An experieced architect or designer will find their skill sets enhanced by the service at Energy Plus, and a newcomer to lighting design will be coached through the selection process.
Both of their showrooms have conference rooms where their customers can meet and lay out their project plans. In addition, the Napa showroom has an audio visual theater.
Il Fanale
J Girasoli
One of the companies that Energy Plus represents on the West Coast is Il Fanale from Italy. They make incredible indoor and outdoor fixtures which can work in industrial, traditional and contemporary vernaculars. This link takes you to their catalog page.
Another company worth a mention is Sonance. I was able to visit their headquaters in San Clemente in November and be privy to an inspiring demonstation of their high quality and esthetically pleasing products. They create precision audio products that include home theater systems, invisible speakers, in-ceiling speakers and outdoor speakers.
At the Lutron California headquaters in Irvine I saw demenstrations of many of their products. At the top end of their line is the Homeworks whole house control system. Homeworks can control lighting, heating and cooling, window coverings and music from wall mounted units or remotely using mobile devices. Jerry at Energy Plus, is an aficionado in lighting control systems and is the leading Lutron distributor in Northern California.
Disclosure
I had my Arc Design office in the Santa Rosa Energy Plus Lighting showroom for a few years in the late nineties. Under Linda's tutorage and with daily access to industry resources and representitives, I had the opportunity to learn the nuts and bolts of lighting design.