Lighting for a glorious old barn in Salisbury

This beautiful old tithe barn is one of our very earliest projects.  It’s a challenging building to light with a lot of the typical issues we face in barns: very high vaulted ceilings, very low ceilings and challenges around fixing points.   The lighting scheme was designed in 2005/6, so is very much halogen based with a few early generation LED fittings.   Whilst the technology has moved on, the design principles behind are still very relevant.

There’s a real sense of fun in the details of this barn conversion: our creative clients loved colour and shape.   The lighting picks out and echoes detail in the furnishings and finishes, see how the decorative lamp over the dining table complements the colours and shape of the ‘Ant’ dining chairs.

In the very low-ceilinged kitchen area, the lit shelves provide a striking focal point, illuminate the wall timbers and get a significant amount of light on to the ceiling.  This is really important.  It ‘lifts’ the space and makes it appear higher than it would do otherwise.  Conversely in the exceptionally tall hall, lighting the ceiling structure is balanced by having enough light down at a ‘human’ level, through the low level stair lighting, the floor recessed fittings reflecting light off the massive posts, and a small amount of downlighting where possible.

Maintenance is always a consideration, but particularly so at this time with halogen fittings.   Even the highest fittings were no higher than could be reached by our client on a ladder.   Faced with a similar project today we would be able to use different lighting technologies to reduce the maintenance considerations further.  All that said, we still love this barn and the way it works so well with our clients’ lifestyles.