On Creating Lightness with Darkness

And just like that, here we are on the cusp of spring.

In last month’s edition of Light Moves, I wrote about seasonal energy and why January is, controversially, a time I always find to be particularly energizing. But February poured in like a fog – a real in-betweener stretch of grey days and miserable news reports that even I couldn’t overcome.

I opted instead to chase the sun to Morocco for a week, intent on finding visual and visceral levity in a place I’ve always loved. The result was a pretty weird trip to a beautiful country that’s changing in all the wrong ways. I’m still working through some fairly complex thoughts it brought on regarding travel, taste, and a dwindling sense of culture and craftsmanship in an increasingly homogenized, autogenerated world that I hope to share cohesively in the next edition – so stay tuned.

In the meantime, I spoke with a friend who I thoroughly admire – lighting designer, ceramist and all around creative being Jenny Loqvist, co-founder of Stockholm-based Paloma Design Studio – to see how someone who’s established herself as deeply creative in all aspects of her life manages her energy. 

Read on for more, as well as what it really means to light spaces for a living (and how to do it better). 

In just a few years, Paloma Design Studio has established itself as a go-to lighting partner for some of the Nordics’ most exciting hospitality projects. What was your and your co-founders’ vision when you decided to build your own studio?

We’ve built Paloma as a female-led studio that focuses primarily on lighting design. Our vision is to use the interplay of light, material and space to create places that excite people and unique experiences that linger with them long after they leave. We don't see light as just a luminaire [or light fixture] but rather a medium in itself which can transform a room, especially when paired consciously with colors, forms and materials. 

What in your mind is “lighting design” exactly?

There is a misconception that lighting designers work only with light but in fact we work equally as much, or sometimes even more so, with darkness. In order to make a space feel vibrant, intimate and harmonious you need contrasts and to find that you need to have a good balance between light and dark. Although some areas in an office might need to be a bit brighter for practical reasons, there are always spaces that can be allowed to be a bit darker. Without darkness, you can't see the light. 

With this in mind, we plan how to light public and private spaces in different ways. Tactically speaking, this involves deciding where to physically place fixtures and what kind of luminaire to use in order to render a room in its most beautiful way. We work very closely with architects, interior designers and landscape architects to find what’s unique about each space and really put that in focus using light. 

What is the most unexpected challenge in lighting projects? 

Historically there has been a very set way of thinking about lighting spaces in terms of following guidelines and recommendations. But often those guidelines are outdated and based purely on data and not softer, more human values. Convincing the client to dare to leverage darkness and allow for contrasts is often the most challenging part. There are sophisticated ways of doing that that allow you to still keep within the recommendations and in the projects where we’ve been given this trust, we’ve had incredible results.

What do you think people most often get wrong or neglect when they think about lighting their homes?

In both private and public spaces I think the biggest problem is the lack of contrasts. At home this might be because you’re using only decorative lighting as your primary light sources, like a beautiful pendant or a wall lamp, but neglecting to use directional lighting, which is what brings out the contrasts in a room and is super important in shaping all spaces. 

Talk to me a bit about your relationship to your own creativity. Where do you jumpstart creativity from? How do you get going? 

It’s a complicated one I would say. Professionally, my creativity thrives on being busy and juggling many things at once. When I have the least amount of time to think, my creative ideas come to me. Privately, in my ceramics work for example, I’m the opposite. I need total calmness and boredom in order to find my creativity. 

I’ve found that since moving back to the Nordics where there actually are prominent seasons I find a lot of my creativity comes just from watching the changes in nature and the light. The Nordic light is amazing in all its shapes and seasons. At the studio, we all love finding beautiful light phenomena in nature that inspires us and anchors our fascination with light. 

What do you find useful to re-inspire yourself, particularly in slower work seasons or even moments of creative burnout?

For us it’s been the natural ebbs and flows of our business that allows us to re-inspire ourselves. It tends to go in waves, sometimes we have a lot of conceptual work at once where at the end of it we just want to crunch some CAD [design software] time. Then you hit a trough where all you do is CAD and admin and all you long for is to do some fluffy creative work. Naturally, you find yourself full of inspiration because you’ve been allowing your right side of the brain to rest while being busy with mundane tasks. I think the key is trusting the flow and knowing you’ll soon be in the next phase.

What kind of environments do you find yourself feeling the most creatively energized?
Personally, I feel most creatively energized when I’m among other creative people. I love coming to our office, meeting my colleagues and sharing thoughts and ideas. I think it’s super important to surround yourself with other creative people, not necessarily in the same kind of business but people who make you feel excited about coming to work. I find creativity in joy and positive emotions so for me it's super important to feel joyful about work. 

Things that helped shape this edition:

• New music from a Swedish hometown hero, Amanda Bergman, to usher us into a new season

• A wonderful longread on the backstory of Nicholas Saunders, founder of the multidimensional brand Neal’s Yard, inadvertent propeller of modern British culinary identity, and about a million other things in one very strange and interesting life

• The story of Morocco’s missing king and his bizarre friendship with a German kickboxer

Light Moves is a newsletter from PALTA Studio. It is personal reflections and conversations with others on the continuous process of refining the shape of life.