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4 min read
Light for a dark vault
How we light rooms that were built to be dim, without flattening them.
Start with the dark
An undercroft is meant to be low and shadowed. The first instinct is to flood it with light, and that is the fastest way to make it feel like a basement. We start by deciding which corners stay dark.
Light goes where people sit, eat and read. The vault itself gets a soft wash from below, warm at 2200 kelvin, so the ribs read as shapes rather than surfaces.
Nothing fixed to the stone
Every fitting stands on the floor or hangs from an existing iron hook. Cables run in the joints of the floor, never chased into walls. If the next owner wants it gone, it comes out in an afternoon.
