Ellie Walton

Jo Calver

Ahead of her talk at LiGHT 24, darc’s editor Sarah Cullen sat down with designer Jo Calver, Founder of Isla James Interiors, to discuss her journey into interior design, and her passion for lighting, which has woven itself into being a core offering in her studio’s services.

Isla James Interiors is an interior architecture and interior design practice that specialises in lighting design services. Headed up by founder and creative director Jo Calver, the studio is based in Pangbourne, Berkshire, and now has grown to seven full time designers. Within the team, every member has experience with lighting design, however, Calver works across interior design and lighting design and her colleague Amar Brar works solely as a lighting designer. 

Calver grew up in the picturesque English town of Woodbridge in Suffolk, where she went to school with her now husband. During her time in education, Calver developed various musical talents, gaining high grades in singing, cello, and piano. Music, and in particular singing, remains a lifelong passion for her, as she was part of many choirs as a young adult and even had a stint as a backing singer for 90s British pop icon, Dina Carroll. Today, music is a staple in the Calver household, with rarely a quiet moment in the home.

After school, Calver went on to study nursing at Birmingham University before qualifying as a paediatric nurse, where she worked at the John Radcliffe paediatric trauma unit in central Oxford for three months. “I did a degree in paediatric nursing, nothing to do with interior design, because when I was at school, I loved art, I loved music, I was definitely creative, but I had no idea what profession to go into. I’m not even sure that I knew of interior design, let alone lighting design. I’m not even sure a lighting designer was a even a thing when I was that age. My whole family had been in the medical profession, so I just followed suit.

“Working in the NHS unfortunately meant I was underpaid and over worked. So, I jumped at the chance when head hunted by a pharmaceutical company. I worked for a smaller company for two years before moving to a large company, Schering Plough, for a further two years.

“Then, we moved to Newbury where we had our two children, Jamie and Isla. My husband worked long hours, and with no family nearby for support, it was impossible for us both to work at that continued pace. So, I spent 12 years at home looking after the children. During that time, while it was a privilege to have the time to spend with them, I was definitely frustrated and found myself wanting to do something more.

“16 years ago, a friend of mine said she was going to pay for an interior designer, or I could help her instead, and so it just started from there. I went on to help a few other friends and I felt invigorated and excited by not only having something for me, but I really loved what I was doing, and thought it was something I wanted to pursue more seriously.

“Shortly after, we moved as a family to Germany for my husband’s work. I couldn’t work as an interior designer there due to the language barrier. My husband’s work paid for me to complete a course of my choosing so I decided complete the KLC distance learning course in interior design. This taught me all the working-to-scale skills, with pen and paper and scaled rulers as back then there was no CAD involved. The course armed me with all of the important skills I needed when I came back to England.

“I set up the business the moment we returned in November 2015 and worked for five years on large projects solo, just my pen, paper and scaled ruler.”

When it came to inspiration for Calver, at the beginning of her design career, the internet was a very different place. She refers to using multiple design magazines as a key source, as well as visiting places such as Chelsea Harbour Design Centre. Pinterest was also a main source and would be heavily used for the creation of project concept boards and mood boards, all of which can now be created just as easily on digital software.

At this point, Calver’s workload began to significantly increase, which led her to employing a trustful team around her. “I then went on to complete a lighting course with Rebecca Weir at KLC as well, which was really inspiring. I was like a sponge sitting there, thinking how amazing lighting design was.”

When establishing Isla James Interiors (named after her two children), Calver was aware of many others delving into the interior design business and it becoming a potentially over saturated area. Using her previous sales experience, she knew she needed a USP for her studio.

“I thought “I’ve got to have something that sets me apart”.  Making homes feel cosy has always been a priority and lighting felt a natural complement. I was always playing around with layouts and moving lamps and felt far more inspired by the technical aspects of the job. So, I started getting involved in the lighting design on a larger projects. I was learning so much about lighting but I really wanted to try designing it myself. Bruce Reynolds, Director of Xavio Design lighting consultancy had become a natural mentor for me with his kind words of encouragement and help.  I asked him if I could design the lighting for my large residential projects and pay him to critique it and he thankfully agreed.”

Calver went on to use this approach for her next two large residential projects, gathering more feedback along the way and surrounding herself with reading and research, before she embarked on her first solo lighting project.

“I love being really knowledgeable about something, an expert. Interior design is an unregulated profession so you can experience a wide range of abilities from an interior decorator to an architectural interior designer with the same blanket title. I wanted to create a studio that people came to for expert advice. I deliberately focused on the technical aspects of design. The majority of our work is assisting clients and architects in perfecting internal layouts. AutoCAD, 3D visualisations, and lighting design are all part of our technical makeup.  We design houses to the last accessory on the shelf even though the foundations have not yet come out of the ground. It’s the academic side of interior design that motivates me and I think the lighting plays into that toolkit perfectly.

“I have a passion for sciences, which is partly why I went into the medical profession. I think there’s not only a creative gene but also a scientific one and I think for me the combination of the two is why I love lighting so much.”

The luxury boutique Gate Hotel in London is a project Calver refers to as one of the hardest but most fulfilling in her lighting design portfolio. “Every single project we take on we care about, and every single project is made better by lighting. We actually don’t take projects now that don’t involve our lighting design because we know these projects will not be able to reach their full potential.

“One of the biggest accomplishments for me was maybe the most stressful, which is why it felt like such an achievement. The Gate Hotel was the very first hotel project that I did when I was solo, and the lighting design involved the level five member’s lounge, reception, bar, and entry reception. I didn’t have any of my team then and I didn’t have any CAD; I marked it up entirely by hand.”

Using her experience from the residential lighting projects that were aided with the critique of Reynolds, Calver was confident she could transfer the majority of those skills into a hospitality environment that followed similar lighting codes.

“Sure, you’re using more LEDs and you’re using more hidden lighting, but generally the principles are the same: to highlight the surfaces, to make it feel warm and cosy and to highlight artwork. “And another real triumph was I was doing it all by hand, which would then go to a CAD designer before coming back to me. There was a lot of backwards and forwards. At times I felt I’d bitten off more than I could chew. But in the end, it’s been a hugely successful project.”

Another notable project for Calver and her team at Isla James is The Store, a hotel in Oxford. Here, the team were responsible for designing the basement spa, ground floor spaces, restaurant, 101 hotel bedrooms and the level five bar and rooftop terrace, which brought with it some challenging light pollution restrictions from the local council. “This was a real team effort that was a really big project, which lasted almost three years, and they’ve only just opened.”

In order to work around the lighting limitations imposed by the council for the external level five areas, Calver implemented a smart lighting system. “We installed a computerised system that could dim the lights down really low. We used DALI so that we could have a dimming profile right down to about 2%. It was a fine balance between the need for lighting as the hotel guests and customers headed for the bar and needed to be able to see on the terrace when it got dark. We installed a wall wash in the ground that caressed light up the sides of the building, but very closely. And because it was preset to 5%, it gave a glow to the very lower part of the building and didn’t go any higher therefore staying within the pollution requirements.

“On the residential side of things, we had a project go viral on Instagram, which I honestly think was down to the interwoven combination of the lighting design and interior design. The project had a lot of panelling, so we set downlights within the upper parts of the panels. This lifts the eye up and creates a sense of drama. There’s also a lot of hidden lighting in joinery, which was a big part of the project. This allowed us to have lots of different layers of hidden lighting and it just gave it this really sophisticated look. And of course, when you’re using lighting to enhance interiors, a high CRI fitting means that all the colours you see are true. We also used a lot of 2400K to bring a real sense of warmth and depth.”

Layered lighting is the absolute foundation any occupied space needs, according to Calver. “We’re still seeing a lot of open plan residential spaces, but the more recent trend is to divide the spaces using separating screens or pocket doors so that you can close off areas and then open them up when you’re entertaining. There’s a big demand for houses to not only be suitable for the occupants living in it but perform as large areas for entertaining and bringing lots of people over. I think people are entertaining more so in their homes since the Covid-19 pandemic, and when you have got young families, it’s very expensive to go out nowadays. A lot of our clients are in their thirties and forties with young families.

“For this, we create a lot of light zoning. I don’t remember the last time that we didn’t put a computerised system into an open plan space. We use a system for all open plan spaces, anything above two zones. And actually, most of our projects have three, maybe even four zones if you’ve got pocket doors shutting off a playroom, that then gets opened up. The idea is to give the ability to unify the spaces when required, but also to pick out the interesting aspects with the lighting in each zone so that you give a character to every space, but also unify it with the lighting. We are often using Lutron or Rako controls in the main open plan spaces.

“In most open plan spaces with, say, three zones there might be roughly 22 circuits, which sounds like an awful lot, but each circuit is doing something completely different. When that’s installed, we go on site and tilt the lights to the right places so they’re delivering light to the right elements. The correct lenses should already be in there - we know what we’re specifying - but if they’re not, we can take them apart and tweak them at that point. Then, we set up the controls system. We will preset most control pads, which typically have six buttons, with one on, one off, one cooking, one entertaining, one party, one rainy day, one sunny day, whatever the client wants. Then, we manipulate every circuit to set it at a percentage to create a different scene, just like a play at the theatre. Quite often, the client will have the controls on their iPad, so if they want to adjust, they can do so. Three months later, we return to the project to ask how they are finding everything. Are there any aspects that they’re not liking? And we re-adjust accordingly.

“We’ve found that most people are turning on multiple lamps in their living room to create that cosy feel. But the message that we’re trying to get across to people is, yes, lamps are fantastic, but independently, that’s only one layer of lighting. You’re only ever going to get that sort of soft dewy glow in certain pockets of the room, and it feels one dimensional. Imagine if you add lighting to artwork on the walls, it makes you look up, it pushes the light out and actually makes the room feel larger than it is. If we’ve got a sideboard that has two lamps, we will always send a very focused light down into the centre so that you can have flowers in the middle highlighted or an object to really enhance the look and feel. The difference is astonishing, it adds those complex layers of feature and architectural lighting. The complexity of lighting is so powerful in interiors.

“We’re also seeing a lot of ‘over-fenitisation’, which means there are too many windows. We’re reducing the amount of glass in homes quite often now. If you live in Texas, it’s great, but we don’t. We live in England and for at least nine or ten months of the year the windows are going to be looking out at dark skies and rain. What we need are walls to have lighting against; glass cannot be lit, and you cannot create a cosy home if you’ve got walls of glass everywhere.”

After going through the various concept and designing stages of a project, which involve numerous meetings with the client to establish the plans for the space, behind the scenes, Calver and her team also work closely on the relationship between lighting and finishes. Towards the end stages of a project, when furnishings and paints are being finalised, the design team will test their lighting plans against the various fabrics, materials, and paint colours and textures to ensure they can adapt their lighting scheme accordingly.

“Anything shiny is a problem. When we are designing internally, we wouldn’t use any shiny finishes. When we are controlling the artificial light, we need to ensure the beam widths don’t interfere with the shiny surfaces. A good example is, if you’ve got a shiny floor in a bathroom and then you put an LED under the sink, all you see in the floor is the LED. So, it might be that we advise that the joinery is designed slightly differently so that the light washes across the cupboard rather than down onto the floor and the fixture is hidden in a lip that’s designed under the cupboard.

“Also, the Kelvin looks warmer in blue joinery than it actually is. So, if you want the same effect as the 2400K in blue coloured joinery, you need to use 2700K to get the look of 2400K. Anything in a dark colour, you have to go up in Kelvin because it can make it feel really rich and warm. And if you’re using deeper wood inserts as well, you need to move up a Kelvin as well because if you use 2400K, it turns really orange because the timber takes on some of the warmth. You are lighting not only the warmth of the light, but the warmth of the timber and it doubles it up and makes it more orange, so you have to step that back as well.

“We’ve got a massive kit bag in the studio with products that we plug in and test against various samples. There are times when designing when you have to recreate the situation and then hide the lighting by the dimensions that you want to try and gain the effect. We almost mock up the whole thing so that you can work out exactly where to place the lighting.”

Looking ahead to the future of Isla James Interiors, Calver has big plans to expand her studio with a lighting-dedicated service and studio in central London.

“The longer-term plan is that we will open a separate lighting design company and while we’ll still be totally integrated when we do our interiors and lighting, and there’ll always be a presence of a lighting designer here in Pangbourne, I think we need to come to London. We need to have a lighting design branch that is completely separate to the interiors, which is picking up those projects that we can offer lighting services for both clients and interior designers. We are maxed out now in terms of space at the Pangbourne studio, so the next move is to open Isla James Lighting in London.”

Part of her lighting design expansion services, Calver and her team produce monthly Instagram live sessions on
@islajamesinteriors called the Interiors and Lighting Clinic, which invite people to join and ask questions specific to their projects that are then answered in real time. Additionally, for their Instagram subscribers, the team provides lighting teaching sessions and host chats once a month where participants can upload plans and discuss lighting-related questions.

Elsewhere, Calver is working on writing a beginner’s lighting design course, which she hopes will launch in Spring 2025.

Catch Jo Calver speaking at [d]arc media’s lighting exhibition LiGHT 24 held at the Business Design Centre, London, on Wednesday 20 November at 3:00pm.

www.islajamesinteriors.com

by Ellie Walton