The crusade against ‘the big light,’ explained

Music icon Mariah Carey is best known for her love songs, but this week she expressed her distinct hate for a particular foe: overhead lighting.

“Listen, I can’t with overhead lighting,” Carey said on the podcast “Las Culturistas,” during a segment in which people have a minute to air specific - and humorous - grievances. She jokingly said she was “tortured by the hideous lighting in every elevator, doorway, gyms. … Shut the lights. Turn them out. I don’t want to see them.” Her salvo struck a nerve.

David Warfel, founding designer at Light Can Help You, agrees with Carey. “Overhead lighting is a curse that most of us live under,” says Warfel, who is based in Madison, Wis. “And I would say that anyone who says they hate overhead lighting is basically saying, ‘Hey, I’m a human being.’”

There are compelling reasons bright light from above can ruin the mood or make someone feel ill at ease. However, the phrase “overhead lighting” has become a catchall for many types of lighting people don’t like: recessed lights, boob lights, LED wafer lights and whatever other ceiling fixtures are on the outs. Indeed, the lighting designers we spoke to don’t even agree on what, precisely, constitutes “overhead lighting.” The jury was split, for example, on whether chandelier and pendant fixtures count.

Still, designers caution against a full-throated disavowal of all lighting affixed to the ceiling. When placed and directed correctly, overhead fixtures, even of the oft-maligned recessed type, can create light that bounces off the walls and ceilings before hitting your eyes, resulting in a soft and comfortable glow. The problem is that most of the time, people don’t bother to set them up this way.

Carey isn’t the only celebrity to put overhead lighting in the spotlight by accusing it of providing overly harsh and unflattering illumination. “Nothing makes me angrier than overhead lighting,” the typically cheerful actress and talk show host Drew Barrymore said last year.

A viral TikTok from Australian TV host Gemma Driscoll directed particular scorn toward what is often referred to as “the big light.” She says “I don’t have many rules for my house, but I do have one, and that is that we never, ever, ever, ever, ever, eh-vah use the big light.” The audio is a popular soundtrack on TikTok and Instagram posts where users show off their lamps, sconces, candles and other sources of light.

The rationale against “the big light” is simple: Direct overhead lighting casts shadows and creates glare. Even worse, light from above typically lands in our glare-sensitive peripheral vision.

“Now that lighting is getting better and brighter, it just means the glare is getting worse and worse,” Warfel says. “While we have the technology and the scientific understanding of the human body to deliver better electric light than at any other point in human history, I think lighting in our homes especially is getting worse instead of better.”

So why are the big light and its ilk so common? Part of it has to do with maximizing profit, says Dave Konstantin, founder of Konstantin Lighting Design. And the fact that often, no one with specific knowledge about lighting design consults on projects. “I’ve gone into multimillion dollar homes that are brand new, just built,” he says. “And the builder has just put very cheap recessed lights throughout the entire house. … A lot of people are totally immune to bad lighting.”

The notion of having a big light in the middle of the room is also a bit of a historic holdover, Warfel says. A fixture up high sheds light more broadly than something on a tabletop or on the floor, which is helpful if you’re relying on an oil lamp or a chandelier with candles. But today’s options are much brighter. “We thought that just by replacing it with a glare-inducing bulb, we would update it,” Warfel says. “But the truth is, we could do something far better today.”

For lighting designers, a renewed focus on the power of illumination feels long overdue. In the 1950s, leading figures such as Richard Kelly made the case that lighting was an integral part of architecture and required the same kind of visual imagination as artforms like painting. He wrote that the “judicious and artful control” of lighting elements could even “stimulate the spirit,” in addition to making a space easy to see and feel safe.

Designers today similarly contend that layers of light are the key to making a room feel welcoming and useful for everything from entertaining to cleaning up after a party. An overhead light can be a part of the equation, particularly if it’s on a dimmer, but it shouldn’t be the only option.

Kristin Harrison, principal designer at Bungalow 10 Interiors in Virginia, tells clients that a mix of floor lamps, table lamps, wall sconces and a pendant or chandelier “really make you have the right type of light.”

Another issue she finds is that people with overhead fixtures often have the wrong LED lightbulbs in them. They end up with bulbs that mimic fluorescent light rather than the warmer tones of soon-to-be unsellable incandescent ones. “The temperature of your lightbulb is a big deal,” she says, saying 2700 kelvins are best.

“That’s why when people are like, ‘I hate overhead lighting,’ it’s not that they necessarily hate it, it’s that they don’t have the right temperature lighting,” Harrison says.

As for Carey, if anyone would know the difference between good and bad lighting, Harrison says, it would be her: “She knows what kind of light makes her face look good.”