Common Lighting Design Mistakes (and How to Avoid Them)

Introduction

Most lighting problems on built projects are not caused by bad fixtures. They are caused by a handful of repeated design mistakes that compound through specification, installation and commissioning.

Why It Matters

Lighting is one of the most visible parts of a finished space. A great interior with weak lighting reads as a weak interior.

The Top Ten Mistakes

• Uniform downlight grids with no hierarchy
• Wrong CCT for the room function
• CRI below 90 in spaces with people
• No vertical illuminance, walls and faces left dark
• Single switch for the entire room, no layers
• Pendants used as the only task light
• Glare ignored, no shielding, deep recess or honeycomb
• Cheap drivers that flicker on dimming
• No daylight integration, lights on all day
• No commissioning, scenes never tuned after handover

Common Mistakes (Continued)

• Specifying lux without specifying glare control
• Skipping DIALux on critical rooms
• Mixing CCT bins from different production lots

Professional Recommendation

Build a checklist. Run every space against it before specification is frozen. Most failures are mistakes of omission, not capability.

Lighting Intelligence by Alya

At Ashwamedha Design Solutions, this is part of our Lighting Intelligence practice, every recommendation is validated through DIALux simulation, lux calculations and visual comfort analysis before it reaches a construction site. Alya, our lighting intelligence platform, packages this thinking into reusable design tools.