The Lighting Design
Excellence Award
Inaugural Edition · Open for Submissions
Honouring lighting designers who transform the experience of space — through the mastery of atmosphere, the intelligence of specification, and the conviction that light is never just illumination.
For Those Who Shape How People Live
Lighting design is the most invisible discipline — and the most felt. A space without considered light is merely a room. With it, the same volume becomes intimate, theatrical, reverent, or alive. Great lighting doesn't announce itself. It makes everything else look better.
The Lighting Design Excellence Award by Design Authority recognises practitioners who approach their craft with this conviction. Whether your work is architectural, decorative, hospitality, or residential, we are looking for the quality of thought that elevates lighting from specification to experience.
This is not an award for the most prominent name. It is an award for the most compelling work — submitted, evaluated, and ultimately chosen by a public that cares deeply about the spaces it calls home.
What Recognition
at This Level Unlocks
Winning a Design Authority Award carries weight that extends well beyond a certificate on a wall.
Reach Architects, Designers & Collectors
Design Authority's audience includes architects, interior designers, hospitality operators, and homeowners who specify and commission lighting. Your recognition reaches the people who actually buy.
Stand Out in a Spec-Driven Industry
Lighting is often the last thing specified and the first thing noticed. A DA Awards recognition signals that your work earns that attention — and that the design community has taken note.
Open to Every Scale of Practice
Independent lighting designers, boutique studios, and established manufacturers all compete on the same terms — on the quality of the work alone.
New Specification Opportunities
Our Winners Directory is a resource for designers and developers specifying for new builds and hospitality projects — your award credentials displayed alongside your work.
Permanent Editorial Profile
Each winner receives a professionally written piece documenting the project — the brief, the concept, the technical approach, and the atmosphere it creates.
Digital Emblem
A high-resolution DA Awards emblem for your website, specification sheets, and social channels — a credible mark in a crowded market.
How Entries Are Judged
Every entry is scored by our editorial team against five criteria — Form, Function, Craft, Innovation, Emotion — contributing 70% of the final score. Public appreciation adds the remaining 30% — this is an award that rewards holistic excellence, not a single dimension of skill.
Atmospheric Control
Does the lighting transform the experience of the space? We look for work where the quality, direction, and temperature of light have been consciously shaped.
Technical Mastery
Is the technical execution invisible? Great lighting design disappears — the effect is felt without the mechanism being noticed.
Integration
How well does the lighting work with the architecture and interior it inhabits? We assess the degree to which the light belongs to the space rather than being imposed on it.
Originality of Approach
Does the work introduce a new way of thinking about light — a new fixture, a new application, or a new conceptual framework? We reward genuine invention.
Material & Form
For decorative and product-led work: does the physical object hold its own? We evaluate form, finish, and the quality of the object as a designed thing in its own right.
Human Impact
How does the light make people feel? We ask whether the work creates a genuinely better human experience — more focused, more at ease, more present.
This space is reserved for
the work that moves people.
Could it be yours?
The inaugural Lighting Design Excellence Award is open for submissions. The work recognised here will be chosen by the people who experience spaces like yours.
Frequently Asked
Your Work
Deserves to Be Seen
Submissions close 20 August 2026. Don't let the window pass.