When light becomes part of the architecture
From natural daylight to warm lamps and concealed fixtures, the way we light our homes is changing, with comfort, mood and function becoming just as important as brightness
There was a time when lighting a home was hardly something anyone had to think about.
A tube light in the middle of the room was switched on, and the job was done. If you could see everything clearly, the room was considered well lit. The brighter, the better.
Today, that logic is beginning to feel a little dated.
Keep updated, follow The Business Standard's Google news channel
Walk into a thoughtfully designed home and the difference is almost instinctive. There might be a warm floor lamp tucked beside a sofa, a pendant casting a pool of light over the dining table, or a concealed fixture quietly washing a wall. A bedroom may be dim and restful at night, but bright enough for getting dressed in the morning. During the day, sunlight filters through a sheer curtain, bringing the room alive without turning it into a greenhouse.
The light is doing more than helping us see. It is shaping how the room feels.
Architect and faculty member of North South University Sujaul Khan believes this relationship between architecture and light is fundamental. "Sensitivity towards light is one of the primal considerations of architecture," he said.
For Sujaul, light is never really static. It moves, changes intensity and colour, and behaves differently from one season to another. The same room can feel completely different at 8am, 2pm and 8pm simply because the light has changed.
That makes designing with light less about installing enough fixtures and more about understanding how people experience a space.
Let the daylight in — carefully
Natural light remains one of the most valuable things a home can have. It can make a cramped room feel more generous, reveal the texture of wood and fabric, and reduce the need for artificial lighting during the day.
But in Bangladesh, the answer cannot simply be: bigger windows.
Our intense sunlight comes with heat. Large expanses of glass may look impressive in an architectural drawing, but they can turn an apartment into an oven, particularly when shading has not been considered. More sunlight can then mean more fans, more air conditioning and, ultimately, more energy consumption.
Sujaul argues that daylight has to be considered alongside ventilation and shading.
Cross-ventilation can help air move through a home, while balconies, overhangs, screens and carefully positioned openings can reduce direct solar exposure. Even something as simple as a sheer curtain can change the quality of incoming light, turning harsh sunlight into a softer glow.
There is something to learn from older homes, too.
Sujaul recalls the gradual transition of light in rural Bangladesh. Step out into an open field and the sunlight can be intense. Move under a tree and it immediately becomes softer. Walk towards a veranda and the light changes again before entering the comparatively subdued interior of the house.
Traditional homes often created this progression almost naturally. Smaller openings, thick walls and shaded verandas helped keep the interior protected from glare and heat.
The result was not a uniformly bright space. It was a sequence of different experiences.
And that, perhaps, is what contemporary interiors sometimes miss: good light is not necessarily maximum light.
The case for softer rooms
The artificial light inside our homes is changing in much the same way.
The single, aggressively bright ceiling light is increasingly being joined — and sometimes replaced — by table lamps, floor lamps, pendants, wall lights and concealed fixtures.
Part of this is simply aesthetic. Warm light can bring out the richness of timber, soften fabrics and create depth where a single overhead light can make everything look flat.
But there is a more practical reason. We do not use every room in the same way all day.
A kitchen needs focused illumination over a worktop. A study requires enough light to read or work comfortably. A bedroom needs good visibility when someone is getting ready, but a bedside lamp may be far more appropriate once the day is winding down.
The living room may be bright when friends arrive and considerably softer an hour later when everyone is watching a film.
Sujaul sees a psychological dimension to this as well.
Some people naturally prefer brightly lit environments; others feel more comfortable in softer, shaded spaces. And after spending much of the day surrounded by glowing phone, computer and television screens, the ability to reduce visual intensity at home can itself become a form of comfort.
This is where layered lighting becomes useful.
Instead of asking one light to do everything, several sources can perform different jobs. A ceiling fixture provides general illumination. A pendant focuses attention on a dining table. A floor lamp creates a softer corner. Concealed lighting can illuminate a wall without putting the light source directly in view.
Sujaul particularly favours hiding fixtures where possible, allowing light to bounce off ceilings or walls rather than shining straight into the eyes.
The trick, however, is knowing when to stop.
Layered lighting does not mean turning every ceiling edge into an LED strip or installing a spotlight for every decorative object in the room. Too many competing sources can make an interior feel restless rather than sophisticated.
The goal is not more light.
It is more choice.
When the room needs help
Not every Dhaka apartment is blessed with generous daylight.
A neighbouring building can block the sun. A deep balcony can shade a window. The orientation of a room can leave it dim for much of the day.
In such spaces, the first instinct may be to compensate with more artificial light. But colour, curtains and furniture can make a surprisingly large difference before another bulb is switched on.
Light-coloured walls and ceilings reflect whatever daylight is available, helping it travel further into a room. Sujaul prefers softer whites, creams and eggshell tones rather than treating brilliant white as the automatic answer to a dark interior.
Curtains are another quiet but important tool.
Where possible, he suggests using two layers: a fine, light curtain that filters daylight while maintaining privacy, and a heavier layer for when more darkness or privacy is required.
Keeping heavy curtains closed all day, however, can work against a room that is already short of daylight.
Furniture matters, too. A small room filled with bulky furniture, dark surfaces and clutter will naturally feel more enclosed. Creating visual breathing space can make it feel brighter without changing its dimensions.
Sometimes, the best lighting intervention is simply allowing the existing light to travel.
Lessons from buildings that understood light
Sujaul's fascination with light goes beyond residential interiors.
One of his earliest memorable encounters with architectural light came when he visited the National Parliament Building while he was studying architecture. What stayed with him was not simply the scale of the building, but the way daylight moved through it.
Light entered through carefully considered openings before bouncing across concrete walls, floors and ceilings. He remembers the experience almost as a "city of light" — a place where light itself seemed to become part of the architecture. As legendary architect Louis Kahn once said, "Light is the giver of all presences."
Years later, older mosques offered another lesson, this time in restraint.
At Kusumba Mosque, the dark basalt stone absorbs much of the incoming light. Thick walls and relatively small openings limit the intensity of what enters. Rather than allowing the harshness of the outside sun to dominate the interior, the architecture filters and softens it.
There is also a climatic logic to the design, with the building allowing cool air to move through the space.
Outside, the sunlight can be unforgiving. Inside, the experience is markedly different: shaded, cooler and calmer.
Near Dhaka, two-time Aga Khan Award for Architecture laureate Ar. Marina Tabassum has used sunlight and natural ventilation to achieve a similar ambience at her Baitur Rouf Mosque, with true sensitivity to climate and history.
For Sujaul, these buildings demonstrate something that is easy to forget in the pursuit of modern glass-and-steel aesthetics: architecture does not always have to fight the climate by shutting it out, nor does it have to invite everything inside.
It can mediate between the two.
That idea translates surprisingly well to the modern home.
A balcony can shade a window. A screen can break the intensity of the sun. A curtain can filter it. A wall can receive reflected light rather than direct glare. A small lamp can illuminate a reading corner without flooding the entire room.
The most successful spaces are often those where light has been given somewhere to go.
A home that changes with the day
Perhaps the biggest shift in contemporary home lighting is that we are beginning to understand a room as something that changes.
Morning light is different from afternoon light. The light needed for cooking is different from the light needed for conversation. The brightness that feels energising at breakfast may feel intrusive at midnight.
Good lighting allows for those changes.
It does not insist that every corner of a home be equally bright at every hour. Instead, it creates pockets of light and shade, giving people the freedom to adjust their surroundings to what they are doing — and how they want to feel.
That is why the best-lit homes are not necessarily the brightest ones.
They are the ones where sunlight has been softened rather than simply admitted, where artificial light has been layered rather than multiplied, and where darkness is not automatically treated as a problem.
Furniture, colour and decoration may determine what a room looks like.
But light determines how we experience it.
