Michael and Penny Young used a lighting designer, their electrician and their own ideas to develop a lighting scheme for their self-build

“We’d been to several open days by Oakwrights before we started our house,” says Michael. “We realised that not only did the building require careful planning but also great lighting to highlight the interior oak on show, especially at night.

“We contacted Lightmaster Direct (lighting design and supply specialists) to give us some guidance on what might be required, visiting their showroom and discussing our requirements in depth over several meetings.

“We paid for them to produce a comprehensive design and plan, but we decided against using them for the installation as we were working closely with our local electrician, Matrix Electrics, who was already on site. He also suggested that we have motion sensors (PIRS) so that the landing and bathrooms are automatically lit if they are visited during the night.

This has proved invaluable, especially for guests unfamiliar with the positioning of the switches. We also had some ideas of our own. We were aiming for a light-filled house with an adaptable lighting system for many different occasions.

“The end result is a home that is a joy to live in. The main open-plan room can be lit in many ways to create different moods and discrete areas. The dining area, for example, has downlighters over the table and the rest of the space can be subtly lit with lamps and concealed LED strips. A lot of the circuits have dimmers to enable pools of light to illuminate furniture or decorative pieces. The view of the house at night from the garden is stunning with the oak features all defined. The garden lighting features wall lights and uplighters on separate circuits. At night, the lighting helps ‘to bring the outside in.’ This was a collaboration between us, our garden designer and our electrician.”