Residential Lighting
April 2000

A nautical-inspired great room has recessed lighting, track lighting and a custom fixture, inspired by fishing boat gear, over the bar.

Architect William C. Tagland talks about
lighting application in high-end homes.

Amorous Architecture
William C. Tagland, AIA,
is principal and project manager
at Studio Tagland Architecture P.C.,
a commercial and residential architectural
design firm based in Harvey Cedars, NJ.
The firm boasts more than 200 projects that
range from traditional and Art Deco
to more unusual designs.

In the front sitting room of a Holmdel, NJ, estate, Tagland put wall sconces on dimmers to make the mood more cozy.

 

Tagland: Our influences often come from nautical things. We do a lot of curved ceilings and exterior curved walls to add softness and beauty. Mimicking the gentle curves of boat hulls adds fluidity to a space, and the lighting is designed to complement this. We try to design lighting applications that disappear into spaces. For example, at a sprawling estate home in Holmdel, NJ, the recessed lighting fixtures in the great room are carefully concealed. It's hard to tell where the room illumination comes from. For structural reasons, we incorporated beams. But the high-end track fixtures seem to blend in, and they perform an important function - allowing us to accentuate areas, such as the card table, while the rest of the space falls away. The light over the bar is playful, an original creation that was manufactured by a company that makes tuna towers for fishing boats.

We do a lot of great rooms in our homes. But we also like to take square footage and create smaller, more private rooms. These intimate rooms perform an important function in offsetting the home's larger, more massive spaces.

At the Holmdel home, the sitting room is very tiny. It's only 9 feet by 16 feet, but it's designed to be a place for quiet comfort, a room to get away from it all and enjoy the New York City skyline. It's cozy. It's intimate. The space envelops you while you relax at the end of the day or go there to have a pleasant conversation. And the wall sconces throw shadows up onto the curved ceiling, where they seem to dance overhead. The room is certainly not over-lit.

So whether we're in the great room or a small intimate space, the lighting has a purpose: It fits the use of the space and generally blends in. When we want the lighting to be out in the open, then we definitely try to exploit it.