Light is one of the most influential elements of every experience we have. What makes the atmosphere during your Friday date night dinner so intimate? Why does a hospital room feel so sterile? What makes your office building feel dull, or your gym’s cycling studio energizing? What distinguishes a beautiful sunny day from a gloomy, rainy one? Whether we perceive it or not, LIGHT plays a fundamental role in each of these experiences, whether good or bad.
Your home or business is no different.
When designing a home or workplace, the focus is often placed on things like tile, countertops, flooring, paint, and furniture. These all play critical roles in the everyday experience of each space. But, if light is treated as an afterthought, every one of these things fails to be as good as it can be.
Don't waste your investments with poor lighting.
Lighting can visually enhance any space when done well, but the benefits of well-designed lighting go far beyond aesthetics. When thoughtfully engineered, light can:
The key to achieving these benefits (and more) is to choose lighting design over lighting layout.
Residential lighting has been handled the same way for decades, with a simple "layout". These are completed in one or both of the following ways:
PERMIT LAYOUT
Fixtures are placed on a plan drawing from a bird’s eye view, often resulting in neat, tidy grids of lights that don’t actually consider the real, 3-dimensional space, in order to meet minimum codes and submit drawings for permits.
Fixtures are placed while walking through the framed-in house, marking out locations on the fly. Decisions for quantities, types, and placements of fixtures are made on the spot, documented with a marker on the floor.
ELECTRICAL WALKTHROUGH
Unfortunately, these approaches result in countless missed opportunities and mediocre results.
Your experience begins as the project ends - and it's too late to go back and make adjustments.
We approach lighting differently. While the traditional processes start with solutions and products first, we start with the desired end experience and work backwards.
Our team's top priority is YOU. We spend time getting to know your lifestyle, priorities, routines, and practical needs, as well as your aesthetic style, to ensure the lighting in each space will appropriately serve you in the best ways possible.
We focus on integrating lighting within your architecture and interior design, rather than throwing it in as a necessary afterthought.
We maximize the interrelationships between light sources, locations, layers, and levels to set the right curated scene in every environment.
We believe in the importance of both architectural and decorative fixtures in creating an overall cohesive design. Here's the difference:
are used for their light effect, while the fixtures themselves are meant to blend into the architecture. These are the workhorses in any space. MAVi specifies and procures the architectural fixtures for our designs to ensure the functional and technical aspects of the design are achieved.
are used for their light effect, while the fixtures themselves are meant to blend into the architecture. These are the workhorses in any space. MAVi specifies and procures the architectural fixtures for our designs to ensure the functional and technical aspects of the design are achieved.
ARCHITECTURAL FIXTURES
are designed to stand out and be seen, but are usually weaker actual light performance. MAVi leaves the decorative fixture specification and procurement to others, like interior designers, as they are best determined in the context of the decor.
DECORATIVE FIXTURES
The ideal design layers decorative fixtures like chandeliers, sconces, and pendants for their style and visual interest, while architectural fixtures like downlights, linear lighting, and step lights provide the functional light to complement them.
Our technical expertise and best-in-class documentation take ideas from concept to reality.
Our design process is integrated throughout the entire project lifecycle, from initial consultation and design meetings through project management and procurement, and finally controls commissioning.
We want to partner with you to ensure that the ideas we discussed translate into the experience you live with for decades to come.