It was a busy week in Dallas as Lightapalooza 2025 rolled into town. With a bustling show floor, sessions covering everything from design to technical skills to project management, and several networking opportunities, there was plenty to take in. There will be a more in-depth report coming soon, but here are 10 quick takeaways from the event.

1. Bad lighting is your friend. In a session named “Fixtures Unlocked: Seizing Opportunities and Overcoming Industry Challenges,” lighting designer David Warfel of Light Can Help You remarked that the best sales technique is to show clients bad lighting and good lighting in the exact same space. “Showing them both in the same space is the only way they will understand that what you provide is phenomenal,” he said.
2. The opportunity for lighting fixtures is huge. In that same “Fixtures Unlocked” panel (which was very informative and will have an article of its own soon), manufacturer rep Dave Thomas said that he believed that the lighting fixture category could one day be bigger than the entire AV category!
3. Never cut the tree branch! In a session called “Landscape Lighting Design – Good to Great,” FX Luminaire’s Anthony Italia explained that you should never cut the tree branch even if you know it will make the lighting look better. “Just like you need an electrician sometimes, you need a landscaper to prune or make beds bigger,” he said. New trees are expensive!
4. Lighting can be simplified into four variables: Time, Pattern, Spectrum, and Intensity. Throughout the show, the complexities of lighting were discussed, but in his keynote presentation, Kevin Houser, PhD, PE (NE), FIES, LC, LEED AP, co-founder of Lyralux, Inc. and professor of Architectural Engineering at Oregon State University, broke it down to those four variables that can be used to manipulate the environment for proper lighting throughout the day.
5. HTA has a brand-new website that premiered while we were at Lightapalooza. This isn’t directly related to lighting, but I did hear about it from Home Technology Association CEO Josh Christian just as he was about to hit the stage for a panel discussion called “From Contractor to Collaborator: Elevating Integrators as Design & Technology Partners.” The new site is very image-heavy to be more appealing to architects and interior designers. Check it out at https://htacertified.org.
6. When a manufacturer asks you what they can do to help, have them go on sales calls. This advice was given by Integration Controls’ co-founder and CEO Jamie Briesemeister, who was on that same “From Contractor to Collaborator” panel. She told the story of how she got hard-to-pin-down architects to meet with her when they learned that a Lutron representative (David Weinstein, who was also on the panel) was going to be in the meeting as well.
7. Kitchens are not symmetrical, yet early lighting plans place the lights symmetrically. Lighting designer Peter Romaniello, IALD, hosted many sessions throughout the show that could fill dozens of articles (we’ve started with both Resi and the Residential Lighting Best Practices Guide, the latest edition of which is available here). In “Fundamentals of Fixture Placement,” he showed the floorplan of a kitchen with symmetrical lighting over the center, which did nothing to light the counters and sink. Light the work areas!
8. Coastal Source’s much-anticipated EVO series starts shipping on February 10! Introduced at its anniversary event last February and showcased at CEDIA Expo, the EVO outdoor lighting fixture got plenty of attention, and now dealers can start installing them.
9. You can use fiber-optic cable to send reliable power to lights over long distances. During a visit to Cleerline’s booth, Ryan Prentice showed me how fiber optics could be used to handle long lighting runs when used with the company’s new outdoor-rated serial-to-fiber converter.
10. Integrators are interested in DMF Lighting’s new PhaseX solution. From the moment the exhibit floor doors opened, the DMF Lighting booth was packed with integrators looking to learn more about the just-announced PhaseX tunable white lighting solution. PhaseX provides the ability to control each fixture individually, set scenes, and offer circadian control — all over standard two-wire Romex.
11. Bonus — Tokyo Disneyland has a Beauty & the Beast ride. Completely unrelated to lighting, but I learned this fact during a fantastic conversation with Lutron’s Melissa Andresko and BlueConnect Partners’ Avi Rosenthal and David Kaplan at the Lightapalooza Showcase Suites Open House and Reception. Beauty & the Beast is a favorite of my wife and daughter, and now my vacation plans may have changed…