Portway Farm Barns

Barn conversion lighting at Portway Farm Barns, Tamworth

Portway Farm Barns was converted into commercial units housing offices, a shop and a bridal studio. Ricoman designed and supplied the lighting throughout.

The lighting requirement

Converted agricultural buildings are awkward to light. The structure is the feature, so fittings have to earn their place without competing with exposed oak beams, and the roof geometry rarely gives you the flat, regular ceiling that most commercial lighting assumes. The units also had different jobs to do. Offices needed usable working light, the shop and bridal studio needed light that flattered products and fabric, and none of it could look like an office ceiling dropped into a barn.

The barn conversion lighting scheme

Our lighting design team specified Estrella Pro linear in white throughout, suspended below the roof structure. Suspending the runs keeps the fittings clear of the beams, so the timber reads as a continuous structure rather than being interrupted, and it brings the light source down to a useful height in a building with a high, pitched roof.

The white finish reads as a deliberate contrast against dark oak rather than a failed attempt to blend in, which is usually the better decision in a period structure. Trying to disguise fittings against timber tends to look like a compromise.

Estrella Pro can be configured as continuous runs or standalone lengths, so the suspended layout follows the structure rather than fighting it.

In the bridal studio, colour rendering mattered more than anywhere else in the building. Estrella Pro delivers a colour rendering index of 90, which matters when a customer is choosing a dress based on how the fabric and their own skin tone look in that room. Anything lower and whites start to read grey or yellow, and the decision gets made under a false impression.

The barns look out over open fields, and the scheme was kept restrained enough that the glazing still does its work during daylight hours rather than the interior lighting dominating.