New York editionOctober 2026
New York
Be a good neighbour.
The New York edition: apartments, parks and piers, hotel lobbies, studios and schools, landmarks and the skyline, and the studios that lit them.
At home
Apartments where the lighting’s job is to disappear, so the rooms, the art and the view can do the talking.
Light that vanishes when it’s offAt Skyhouse, a white penthouse with framed views, Tillotson hid the light in glass-fronted troughs and two-inch ceiling reveals.
A Zen-like oasis on Park AvenueAt a 525 Park Avenue apartment, the light is seen as softly glowing planes, and only a few fittings are allowed to show.
An apartment lit for its artAt 322 Central Park West, adjustable downlights wash warm wood walls, and an onyx wall glows from within.
A lobby with quiet prestige.Fisher Marantz Stone lists 15 Central Park West, by Robert A.M. Stern Architects, among its New York projects; stone columns and a lit oculus carry the lobby.
Parks and shore
A waterfront park that dims itself for the houses above it, a courtyard of chandeliers in Central Park, and an aquarium on the Coney Island beach.
The park that dims itself for Brooklyn HeightsBrooklyn Bridge Park was lit to protect the view of Manhattan from the homes above it, and it was among the first parks to dim its lights park-wide.
Five hundred chandeliers under the treesAt Tavern on the Green, Focus Lighting hung 500 handmade crystal chandeliers over the courtyard and kept the rest simple.
Under the highway, down to the riverOn the East River esplanade, a glowing girder guides people under the FDR Drive to the water without blocking the view.
An aquarium lit like the seaFor Ocean Wonders: Sharks!, Focus Lighting studied how light behaves underwater and rebuilt it with lamps.
Rooms for the evening
Hotel lobbies, lounges and bars: bright enough to find the desk, dim enough to stay, and polite to the building they live in.
Eight floors of amber, and a blue skylightIn the Tribeca Grand’s atrium, each floor’s ceiling glows a deeper colour than the one below, until the skylight turns blue.
A hotel lit like a Broadway houseThe Civilian Hotel was built new on a tight budget and lit to feel as if it had been there forever.
Following Philippe StarckFor the Royalton’s renovated lobby, Focus Lighting uplit teak screens and hung glass pendants that seem to do all the work.
Warm wood, live plants, efficient lightAt 1 Hotel Central Park, Focus Lighting layered LED light to bring out natural materials and living botanicals.
A bar that dims when the trains slow downAt Moynihan Train Hall’s food hall, the lighting moves from bright and busy by day to softly dimmed after dark.
A wall of keys, lit from behind.WestHouse takes its cue from a 1920s Manhattan residence: decorative pendants, LED grazing built into the shelves, and a front desk set against a backlit wall of keys.
A 1927 lobby, made new.Park Central Hotel, near Central Park and Carnegie Hall, has been part of Midtown since 1927. Its renovated lobby mixes decorative fittings that nod to its history with careful accents on the new finishes.
A hotel that is also a gallery.The Chambers Hotel shows an extensive collection of original art in its lobby, corridors and rooms, and each piece gets its own accent light to hold its place on the wall.
Dim enough to talk.Focus Lighting’s pictures of Moxy Chelsea’s dining room show deep tones, warm pools on the tables and a ceiling that doesn’t steal the scene. The studio’s page publishes the photographs without project notes.
Work and study
A ballet school, a newsroom, an agency and a girls’ school, where light has to be even, honest and kind to the people inside all day.
Light for dancers, not for dramaAt the School of American Ballet, ribbons of light run across the studios at right angles to the mirrors, so every corner is bright enough to work in.
An office whose light follows the dayAt R/GA’s New York offices, the ceiling light starts at 2700K in the morning, cools to 4000K at noon and warms again by evening.
A school hall with columns like treesAt Marymount School, One Lux Studio lit a new hall where ribbed columns open into the ceiling like branches.
Light for an open planAt Bloomberg, Fisher Marantz Stone used perimeter lines, strict downlight grids and coves to give an open office order and depth.
A lobby that reads as one plane.In One Lux Studio’s photographs of 96+ Broadway, the reception is lit indirectly: the ceiling stays a calm plane and the stone desk is the brightest object in the room.
A law firm with a moss wall.One Lux Studio’s pictures of Bass, Berry & Sims show a pantry with a green moss wall under warm pendants, and a reception lit from coves. The page names the client but not the city.
After the show
Concert halls, museums, plazas and a synagogue: landmarks New York keeps relighting, a century or more after they were built.
Gaslight, rebuilt in LEDThe Veterans Room at the Park Avenue Armory was finished in 1881 by Louis Comfort Tiffany and Stanford White. Its 2017 restoration brought back the look of gas.
Carnegie Hall, from the facade to the stageFor the 1987 renovation, Fisher Marantz Stone lit four things at once: the facade and canopy, the lobby, the halls and the stage.
Lighting a facade through the treesThe museum’s 77th Street front is hidden by old trees, so FMS modelled it in leaf and bare before deciding how much light to use.
Light the audience as if they were on stageOn Lincoln Center’s new Grand Entry Stairs, the challenge was to light the people as evenly as the steps.
A facade like a Torah scrollAt Lincoln Square Synagogue, LEDs hidden in the frames of undulating glass ribbons make the facade glow without a single visible source.
A building that has to light anything.The Shed commissions new multidisciplinary work, so every space needs flexible lighting: continuous track in the galleries, and work light hidden in the beams so the ceiling stays clear for theatrical rigging.
The first renovation since 1940.Tiffany & Co.’s Fifth Avenue flagship, transformed with OMA in its first renovation since it opened in 1940, moves from the original facade into an immersive main floor lit for art as well as jewellery.
A store that rearranges itself.Nike’s 68,000-square-foot House of Innovation changes its layout with the seasons, so the lighting is designed to cope with almost any arrangement, and the fitting rooms have colour-tunable light.
The skyline
Towers and crowns that belong to everyone who can see them, lit to join the skyline rather than shout over it.
A crown that keeps its own viewsOne Vanderbilt’s crown can burn like a flame for Yom Kippur or flash for July 4, but its everyday scenes are graded so they don’t spoil the observation deck.
A clock tower, relit and partly reusedFor the Edition Hotel’s tower, once the Metropolitan Life building, FMS mixed new technology with refurbished original fittings.
Let the brick hold the warm lightAt the 1903 Mansfield Hotel, Focus Lighting placed small fittings so the facade’s stone, ornament and rhythm could carry the night.- An award for 1717 Broadway.Focus Lighting’s exterior lighting for 1717 Broadway was named in The Architect’s Newspaper’s Best of 2015 for architectural lighting, according to the studio’s news page. We could not confirm which of the studio’s photographs shows it, so this brief runs without one.