When you envision your perfect home, chances are you’re not thinking about one single element, you’re thinking about how you want to feel in the space.
Lighting is a crucial part of your home, and that warm, comfortable feeling rarely comes from one light source alone. It’s built from thoughtful layers—paired with the right mix of design decisions that suit your home’s architecture and your story.
At Speas Interior Design, we treat lighting as both an important technical system and the “jewelry” of your home design. Your windows bring in natural light and brighten a space during the day, but most ambient, task, and accent lighting comes from fixtures thoughtfully placed in the room. These lighting solutions are curated from designer showrooms or fabricators, and others will be fully custom pieces created just for you by trusted artisans.
Designing in Layers: Ambient, Task, & Accent Lighting
At Speas Interior Design, we start with a lighting plan built around three essential layers:
- Ambient light creates an overall glow so you can move through the space and see comfortably.
- Task lighting supports specific activities—prepping a meal at the kitchen island, reading at a chair, applying makeup at a vanity.
- Accent lighting highlights architecture, art, and texture; it’s where drama and personality come into the design.
When we begin to plan your finishing touches, we can decide where a designer showroom fixture is perfect as-is, where we refine and customize, and where a fully custom piece is warranted to achieve the look and function that benefits your home.
Ambient Light with Architectural Intent
When you start a design with the ambient lighting and architecture of a room in mind, the decorative fixtures don’t have to work as hard. They can be designed more like art pieces—scaled, finished, and detailed just for this home.
At Contemporary Reflection, the architecture itself invited a layered lighting approach. We integrated ambient lighting into tray ceilings, shower walls, beneath floating benches and cabinetry, and even in the wine room—embedding ambient illumination directly into the structure of the home.
In the kitchen, that base of architectural light allowed us to be more sculptural with the decorative fixtures:
- A custom island pendant aligns carefully with the island’s proportions and the sightlines into the adjacent spaces.
- Coordinated decorative fixtures in the surrounding areas carry the same language of clean lines and warm finishes without competing visually.
Task Lighting that Works as Hard as Your Kitchen (and Bar)
Task lighting doesn’t have to be utilitarian. When it’s custom-designed, it supports your routines and becomes part of the room’s overall mood.
At Savory Mountain Retreat, the kitchen island became a true focal point, with a full-width open shelf and integrated lighting beneath. Here, we layered task and ambient light in a way that serves both functionality and family rituals:
- A custom island pendant provides targeted light exactly where the family preps meals, plays cards with the grandkids, or lingers over breakfast. Its scale, height, and distribution are tuned to that island—not guessed from a photo.
- Under-shelf and under-cabinet lighting add soft task illumination and a subtle glow in the evenings, so the kitchen feels welcoming even when the main lights are dimmed.
The same thinking continues at the bar:
- Custom backlighting at the bar transforms storage into a feature wall—bottles, glassware, and finishes come alive without harsh glare.
- This layer of light doubles as a nighttime ambient source, replacing the need for bright overheads when the homeowners simply want to enjoy a quiet drink.
Accent Lighting as Functional Jewelry
Accent lighting is where chandeliers, pendants, and specialty fixtures really shine, depending on the space and your needs.
Powder rooms are some of our favorite spaces to treat as little jewelry boxes. Because they’re small and often used by guests, we can be bold with materials and lighting.
Across projects like Evergreen Mountain Haven and Contemporary Reflection, accent lighting often includes:
- Custom backlighting behind mirrors, niches, or wall panels to create a soft halo rather than a single bright point of light.
- Sculptural pendants or small chandeliers that feel like jewelry—scaled to the room but distinctive enough to make a lasting impression.
- Carefully placed recessed or toe-kick lighting to guide the eye and create depth without overwhelming the space.
The result is a powder room that feels intentionally illuminated from multiple angles.
Choosing the Right Level of Customization
We often talk with clients about customization in levels, all of which can coexist in one home.
- Curated Fixtures: High-quality fixtures—like many collections from heritage lighting brands—are incredibly versatile when the proportions and finishes already align with your home. We can pair them with thoughtful architectural lighting so they don’t have to do everything alone.
- Designer Showroom: Sometimes seeing is believing, so taking our clients to visit our partners helps them envision their new space. We work with a talented network of showrooms, designers, and artisans who create high-quality fixtures, but it is a great opportunity to see the quality and craft that goes into each piece and the details, finish, and scale of each piece.
- Fully Custom Fixtures: In other cases, nothing off-the-shelf will truly serve the architecture or the way you use the room. That’s when we explore fully custom options created from collaborations with artisans and fabricators, where the lighting must respond to unique forms or focal points.
Ready to Reimagine the Lighting in Your Home?
Whether you’re building a new home or remodeling a beloved space, your lighting has the power to transform how every room feels and functions.
At Speas Interior Design, we listen to how you live and design a complete lighting plan around layers of light with a mix of curated and custom solutions that feel tailored to your architecture and your story.
If you’re ready to explore what luxury lighting could look like in your home, we’d love to help. Contact us online or call (719) 685-0144 to schedule your consultation. Our showroom is in Colorado Springs, and we proudly serve homeowners across Colorado and beyond.