Why Lighting Is the Hardest Scope to Staff — and What Firms Are Doing About It

Talk to principals at most architecture and engineering firms about lighting, and you'll hear some version of the same thing: it's a scope that's hard to staff well, hard to keep staffed, and hard to price consistently.

Here's why.

Lighting design draws from several disciplines simultaneously. The aesthetic and experiential side is closer to architecture and interior design — it requires an understanding of how space, material, and light work together to create an environment. The technical side — photometrics, energy code compliance, controls coordination — requires engineering depth. And the controls side increasingly requires knowledge of building automation systems, commissioning protocols, and wireless networking standards. A person who is genuinely strong across all three of those areas is not common.

Most firms end up with one of two situations. Either they have someone who's strong technically and does lighting layout work that satisfies code but doesn't fully serve the design intent. Or they have someone with a strong design sensibility who struggles on the documentation side, and the construction documents require significant review. Neither situation is a failure of the individual — it's a reflection of how genuinely multi-disciplinary the scope is.

What are firms doing about it? A few approaches are becoming more common.

Some firms are formalizing subconsultant relationships for lighting on projects where the scope warrants it. This gives them access to specialized expertise without adding a full-time hire — and it creates a clean line of accountability for a scope that's otherwise distributed across the team.

Others are investing in software and training to improve in-house capability —rendering software, photometric analysis tools, and controls coordination workflows. This helps on straightforward projects, but it doesn't fully address the depth-of-expertise gap on more complex work.