No one is sure where and when it started, but many wonder why it continues. Is Italy responsible for the Big Light—the single, blazing overhead bulb—or just plagued by it? For a place that’s home to so much influential design, and the radiance of chiaroscuro in 15th-century oil paintings, it’s odd that Italian homes, restaurants, and bars are so brightly lit. Walk through Florence after dark, or along the Baroque corsos of Sicily, and you’ll pass trattorias with appealing menus, antique wood paneling, and vaulted ceilings, but they’re illuminated like emergency rooms.
“When you eat in a restaurant at night, it’s never in the most romantic light, and certainly not flattering for a photograph,” says Violante Nessi, a fashion designer from Bologna.
“I understand why, before the advent of recessed spotlights, a single, central ceiling light that can do everything was a sensible concept,” Lee Broom, an award-winning furniture-and-lighting designer, tells me. “But in 2024? I love a big light, but … when it’s a 1,000-watt bulb in the middle of a room, precariously hovering within a tiny shade, that’s a problem.”
“When you eat in a restaurant at night, it’s never in the most romantic light, and certainly not flattering for a photograph.”
Unless you’ve scored a reservation at one of the few places in Italy with good light, usually those bathed in the glow of numerous Michelin stars, you’ll find yourself at an abysmally lit table with excellent wine and food. While “the owners of high-end restaurants employ an interior designer, restaurateurs generally don’t understand the reason why lighting is important,” explains chef Enrica Rocca, founder of an eponymous cooking school in Venice. “It’s a lack of education, especially in small towns.”
“Italians like to see their food,” says Rome-based food writer Elizabeth Minchilli. “If you go to a traditional Italian trattoria that dates back 40 years or more, you’ll definitely bask in the harsh bright light. When you go to a newer place that has great food, they’ve made an aesthetic decision—they want the place to hark back to the trattorie of old.” Italy is trapped in this loop of stylistic affectation.
Classic Italian architecture has high, often ornate ceilings. Think of grand palazzi, sparsely furnished at floor level but resplendent with Murano chandeliers. They were wonderfully romantic and warm in tone until vulgar old electricity came in after the 1920s. Suddenly every piano nobile went from The Leopard to Salo, ablaze with jarring highlights and shadows.
To make matters worse, in the 1980s and 1990s “there was a shift towards minimalist mono sources of light,” says Robin Standefer, who co-founded the New York design firm Roman and Williams with her husband, Stephen Alesch, in 2002. She believes this paring back in contemporary interiors is partly to blame for Italy’s issues with light. “Sadly, people favored this trend over the art and science of lighting.”
It might be that Italy prefers the Big Light because it favors the object itself. Paul Nulty, a lighting-design consultant who has worked on numerous international hotels and Gloria Osteria, a restaurant in Milan, believes there’s a compulsion in Italy to create objects that grandstand. “It’s a country that’s always been synonymous with art and sculpture,” he says.
“That sensibility made its way into the world of lighting, where pieces are designed to draw the eye.”
In some cases, that’s led to gorgeous spectacles. “Think of beautiful churches,” says Standefer. “There is typically a giant single fixture but surrounded by hundreds of candles anchoring the space.” But to make it work, multiple light sources are necessary. “We tend to use a minimum of seven light sources on projects,” she says. “We love a pendant that can cast a wide glow paired with a torchère that casts light upwards, together with architectural lighting or a slew of smaller sources.”
A harsh, glaring light should be reserved for when you lose your keys, a spider scuttles under a chair, or an ambulance crew has just arrived. As Standefer says, “It puts you in a bad mood.” As Broom sees it, there’s a simple solution: “Get a dimmer switch!”
Mark C. O’Flaherty is a London-based interiors and portrait photographer. He writes about design for The New York Times, World of Interiors, and Financial Times, among other publications
