Seeing the Light: Designing for Natural Light in Worship

A leading church architect reports on worship-critical natural light, and how it plays a vital role in the symphony of human senses.

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Jack DeBartolo 3, FAIA, serves as principal and design leader of Phoenix-based debartolo architects. After joining his father in the firm in 1996, the two spent more than a decade collaborating on significant architecture in areas such as academic, residential and worship.

Today, DeBartolo leads the firm and is a big believer in the power that light can bring to a space. He sat down with Church.Design to describe how his firm incorporates the element of natural light, specifically, into its worship space designs, and to what effect. 

Church Design: How would you characterize the psychology of natural light in a space?

DeBartolo: Light is the soul of architecture. A space without light is a space without life. Henry Plummer, who I began to read in graduate school and have great respect for, said, “Among the various means of endowing material form with the wholly immaterial force of the human spirit … one of the most powerful, if least understood, is the medium of light.”

"We believe that light is the most effective way to lock our design to the nature of time and place, to embed a sense of our Creator into the spaces we are challenged to create." Jack DeBartolo 3, Principal and Design Leader, debartolo architects, Phoenix, AZ

I have spent my career in architecture pursuing light and material in the making of spaces for the soul. We believe that light is the most effective way to lock our design to the nature of time and place, to embed a sense of our Creator into the spaces we are challenged to create.

Church.Design: What sorts of emotion can light lend to people within a space?

DeBartolo: Natural light plays a vital role in the symphony of our senses. It is a pre-condition for human health, as light gives us our sense of space and time. Yet, most of the time, we are unaware of its importance and we take its presence for granted. Great works of art and architecture let us experience light in all its nuance and colors, feel its interaction with material and space, and “make visible how the world touches us,” as Maurice Merleau-Ponty once wrote.

"Lobbies and entries are critical transitional thresholds in architecture. People are typically coming indoors from full sunlight.... "

Churh.Design: How does your firm approach designing with natural light in the church setting?

DeBartolo: Our process for working with churches and other clients begins as a research-based process of listening and gathering information. This process can be long and often slow—it requires sustained restraint to solution-based thinking and drives us toward asking questions about “how” and “why” before we start to consider concepts and solutions. This process guides us toward unique responses to people, place and purpose.

In this process, we see light as the “immaterial material” that we use in order to shape places around the activities and conditions of our clients. Many of our projects are in the desert Southwest, where light can sometimes be our most harsh advisory and, at other times, our most valued asset. Our first strategy is often to position our architectural response in a way that uses the light and shadow to be most beneficial to the functions and purpose. Considering light and heat, shade and time of day is key to our research and methodology.

Church.Design: Can you provide examples of natural light used in gathering spaces within a church setting?

DeBartolo: Light is critical to creating gathering spaces that refresh the soul. Spaces without natural light are dead and require electric light to make them “feel” alive. Not to say that it takes a great deal of light—there are times when a small amount of light placed strategically or powerfully is far more effective than walls of light. We have created spaces where one is bathed in diffused natural light and we have created spaces where there are only slivers of light—both extremes are effective when done with great intentionality and purpose.

"... there are times when a small amount of light placed strategically or powerfully is far more effective than walls of light."

Church.Design: What about in lobbies?

DeBartolo: Lobbies and entries are critical transitional thresholds in architecture. People are typically coming indoors from full sunlight and, in our climate, this means 5,000-10,000 fc. Too often building entries are blunt transitions to indoor lighting of 30-50 fc. When possible, we create a tapered transition from the outdoors to the indoors by extending the threshold and providing several light transitions—filtered or dappled light to full shade to a light-filled interior to a fully controlled interior. A lobby we recently completed for a large church is the third step in this transition from exterior to interior and it is a transformative space that is filled with light from the sides, but also from above, and has walls that stack and slide to blur the line even better when the weather is temperate. 

Church.Design: What is your take on church black-box auditoriums vs. contemporary worship auditoriums that do use natural light?

DeBartolo: I have been in many of these spaces, and some are better than others. A true black-box theater is a purposeful tool of architecture and is intended to transform a person into another place, [allowing] them to forget "where" they are and fully "enter in" to another reality. This may be appropriate in some situations.

Churches lit completely with man-made light are dependable and consistent, but also monotonous and, thus, seem to demand an ever-rising need to impress with newer technology and clever tricks. On the other hand, an intelligent use of natural light can contribute to a wonderful variety and liveliness to a place of worship. The variety created by daylight reveals the weather, movement of the sun and clarity of the sky. As the angle of the sun’s rays vary from hour to hour, so does the shape of the light in the room and this can be quite dynamic.

However, we are seeing a renewed outlook by contemporary church leaders who are seeing how the Sunday worship experience needs to be part of “all of life.” If this is going to be accomplished—seeing out into the world and filling the room with daylight is critical.

Church.Design: How can (and should) LED lighting and control technologies mingle with natural light in a space?

DeBartolo: This is highly responsive to the way each space is used. A well-lit classroom with daylight and electric lighting is a rather different set of challenges from that of a worship space. We believe that there is an important relationship of interaction between electric lighting and day lighting. One of the most important is getting the color temperature and the color-rendering index right using high quality LED.

"We believe that there is an important relationship of interaction between electric lighting and day lighting. One of the most important is getting the color temperature and the color-rendering index right using high quality LED."

We recently re-lit a space we designed in 2007 in LED, and the contractor used standard quality LED. The building has a very large roof and a generous amount of glass on all sides. After the owner experienced the new LED lighting they called me and asked what I did – that the space lost its great feel. We had the contractor change to a high quality warm LED that had a CRI of 90 and the owner called to thank us for the amazing light again.

Often spaces we design can function well without any electric lighting during the daytime hours. Yet creating a space that feels alive with light and also functions well both in the daylight hours as well as the night is important. Therefore, our strategy for electric lighting is to create a harmonic relationship between daylight and the electric light, where the electric light fills in the darker areas when needed.

Church.Design: Why is that still important?

DeBartolo: This is even more important today as light technology is changing. With incandescent lighting becoming obsolete, it is important that architects be keen experts (or find experts you can depend on) who can guide you when it comes to designing spaces that function well as day-lit and electric-lit spaces. While we appreciate the drama of a single source of daylight that grazes light across a cast-in-place concrete wall, we also realize that this is not appropriate for all conditions. Sometimes a simple window intentionally placed across from a room entry is sufficient to continue the movement of the eye out of the space.

"What is important is to avoid rules and work with a team of experts that understand the what, the how and the why behind daylighting and lighting design."

We also realize that placing apertures adjacent to perpendicular walls is typically more successful than placing a window opening in the middle of a wall, but at times that is what is required. What is important is to avoid rules and work with a team of experts that understand the what, the how and the why behind daylighting and lighting design.

Church.Design: Tell us about a project that comes to mind as a good example of how you brought natural light into play in a worship space.

DeBartolo: We completed a church campus in Mesa, Arizona, [where] the main worship space had large expanses of clear glass on both sides of the main worship space. While there were trees outside these windows to filter the light, these expanses of light completely changed the dynamic of the room, and the new digital display (instead of projection) functioned flawlessly in the space, even [though it was] very bright.

Another project we are currently working on utilizes the concept of bringing light into the sanctuary through conventional high windows in the exterior of the large box church, while having walls that baffle the light five feet inside the room. This idea is rooted in creating natural-light baffles in the room that bring the glow of daylight, the changing nature of the day and [the] color of the environment—without the harsh nature of bringing in direct sunlight.

[Editor's note: Originally published in October 2019.]

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