The studio
About Darkroom
We believe in shadow, as much as light.
Darkroom Lighting Projects is a lighting design and supply company based in Linden, Johannesburg. We take a design led approach to lighting, developing project specific concepts and then supplying the products that deliver them, for clients, architects and interior designers across South Africa.
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We believe in shadow, as much as light. Welcome to our world.
Chris Pietersen, Director
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Who we are
Darkroom Lighting Projects is a lighting design and supply company based in Linden, Johannesburg. We take a design led approach to lighting, developing project specific concepts and then supplying the products that deliver them, for clients, architects and interior designers across South Africa.
Our work has run through five star lodges, award winning retail, restaurants, corporate interiors, exhibitions and private homes. It has been published in VISI and across the local design press, and the Exclusive Books store at Ballito, lit by Darkroom, won the 2017 Retail Design and Development Award for the best retail store design within a shopping centre in South Africa.
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What we believe about light
Most lighting fails not because there is too little of it but because there is too much of it in the wrong places. Uniform brightness flattens a room. It removes the contrast that makes a material look like itself, it kills the sense of depth an architect spent months creating, and it leaves a space feeling like a corridor no matter what was spent on it.
Shadow is the other half of the discipline. Deciding what not to light is as much a design decision as deciding what to light, and it is usually the decision that separates a room that works from a room that is merely bright.
That is what the studio name means, and it is the thing the work has been organised around from the beginning.
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How we work
We work in three modes, depending on what a project needs. An independent, product neutral design service charged as studio hours. A design and supply appointment that runs from brief to a full costing, at which point the client decides whether to buy from us. And a technical review, where a design already exists and needs a second opinion before it becomes an order.
That third route is how most of our longest standing studio relationships run. Architects and interior designers come back to us because we take a complicated strand of the project, simplify it, put numbers to it and hand it back tied to what the building was always trying to be.
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From concept to commissioning
The stages flex to suit the size of the project. The sequence does not.
- Brief and site. The drawings, the intent, the constraints, and a walk through the space after dark where that is possible.
- Concept. A written and visual lighting concept setting out the mood, the layering and the key moments, area by area.
- Technical design. Layouts, schedules, data, calculations where they are needed, and the control and circuiting strategy.
- Costing. A firm number against a resolved design, early enough to still be useful.
- Supply. Procurement with lead times confirmed in writing and deliveries phased to the programme.
- Installation support. On hand through construction, including the value engineering conversations.
- Commissioning. On site after dark to aim, focus and set the scenes. This is where a scheme is either delivered or quietly lost.
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Every project has a golden thread
A downlight every metre and a half is a trend. It has been a trend for a long time and it is still a trend, and it is the reason a great many expensive interiors look flat within a few years.
We look for the one idea a project turns on and let the lighting serve that instead. A scheme built that way usually costs no more, dates far more slowly and is still doing its job long after the fashion that surrounded it has gone. That is the return on the investment, measured over the life of the building rather than at handover.
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Energy, efficiency and the practical reality
Lighting is one of the few building services where a design decision changes the running cost every day for the next decade. In South Africa that matters more than in most markets, both because of tariffs and because supply cannot be assumed.
Connected load, control strategy, fitting life and maintenance access are treated as design inputs rather than as a report at the end. Where a project runs on a generator, an inverter or a solar installation, the lighting is designed to the power available from the first sketch rather than squeezed into it afterwards.
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The studio
Darkroom is a small studio, which is deliberate. Every project is run by the people who designed it, and the person you speak to at the start is the person on site at commissioning.
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Where we are, and where we work
The studio is in Linden, Johannesburg. We work across Gauteng constantly, and lodge and hospitality projects take us into Limpopo, Mpumalanga, KwaZulu-Natal and the Cape. We have supplied into projects beyond South African borders. Distance is a programme and cost question rather than a limitation.
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Start a conversation
Tell us about the project. Drawings if you have them, a description if you do not, and we will come back with an honest view of what is involved.
Enquire
Start a conversation
Tell us about the project. Drawings if you have them, a description if you do not, and we will come back with an honest view of what is involved.