This lateral apartment in the heart of Belgravia was refurbished to create an open plan living, dining and kitchen space. The emphasis was on highlighting the client’s extensive art and sculpture within the space – making it feel like a gallery within a home.
Bespoke glass cabinets were designed around support columns cladded in mirror with floating Perspex shelves. After considering several cabinet display lighting options and edge lighting the shelves, it was decided to simply up and down light the cabinets and let the light reflect in the surfaces. Any other lighting option was felt to detract from the display objects themselves and tipped the balance into a more museum display approach, and away from a residential setting.
Downlights were carefully positioned to illuminate the extensive artworks and together with table lamps provided the general lighting ambience in the room.
A custom stone and brass central island, inlaid with brass detailing and a plinth supporting a hare sculpture was treated as an entire sculptural element. The gap between the two elements was uplit to highlight the wavey brass detailing and also help put the sculpture in silhouette. Eyeball uplights were installed in the plinth which, together with recessed downlights beautifully modelled the hare sculpture. As it was also a working kitchen, uplights were restricted to the sculptural element and concealed out of normal sight lines.
The colour temperature of the general downlights was 2700K to create a warm ambience. However, the downlights illuminating the powder blue cabinets were 3000K as this enhanced the finish and provided a better colour rendering than the warmer light. The cooler colour temperature was also used on the bathroom stone finishes as the brought out the delicate blue colour. Carefully selecting different colour temperature lights helped to enhance the different finishes within the space and blend the overall scheme together.
