In my LD+A, May 2025 column I called attention to the increasingly fractured landscape of organizations in the lighting industry. Since then, the conversation around advocacy, unity, and transformation has deepened, and over the last several months of considering the many voices contributing ideas, wish-lists, criticisms, advocacy plans, and more, one essential dimension remains at risk of being overshadowed: the science of light itself.
It’s vital to understand who we are—by identity, affinity, or occupation—and to build pathways for education and equity. But none of that holds without a third anchor: discovery. Lighting is a design medium, yes; it is also a science. Without the shared language of measurement and prediction, none of us—designers, specifiers, manufacturers, educators—can fully do our jobs.
Our bond isn’t just in who we are or what we do, it’s in how we do it. Our only true common thread is science. As we continue to rely on that bond, we can keep evolving as diverse, specialized, and interconnected professionals, but we need:
a well-defined curriculum with science at its core
communicable core competencies related to the science of light
support for R&D that advances topics like vision, color, and perception.
Did you know that IES Membership now includes access to all Lighting Science standards? This benefit might go overlooked, but its implementation was a strategic message to current and future members: every “what we do” in lighting relies on a scientific foundation. Building upon the assumption of that baseline, the IES has defined six key knowledge pathways: Interior Applications, Exterior Applications, Controls, Measurement/Testing, Daylighting, and Roadway.
“We can’t advance lighting education or equity without anchoring both in credible, consensus-based science”
Since 2022, we’ve categorized every resource the IES develops (standards, LEUKOS articles, webinars, symposia, and more) across those six defined pathways. That amounts to 414 distinct assets, all organized in a dynamic knowledge matrix. Of those, 129 directly support Lighting Science, a category we further divide into subtopics like Nomenclature and Language; Physics and Measurement; Color, Calculations, and Vision; and Perception, Photobiology, and Health. These subtopics help us assign meaningful value to each resource and ensure a balanced, evolving body of knowledge across lighting practice.
And here’s the flaw—we rarely talk about it. I don’t show this matrix in presentations. We don’t make it public. We don’t speak to the depth of our internal efforts to structure and sustain the science that supports everyone’s work.
Still, it hums in the background, both evidence of the IES’s ongoing commitment to our mission and motivation to do right by the knowledge among us.
Affinity groups such as Equity in Lighting, Light Justice, NACLIQ, WILD, and others are building critical cultural momentum. They reflect the lived experiences of the individuals who practice lighting, and they are essential to fostering belonging, representation, and community.
It’s worth reflecting on why these groups emerged: in part, because organizations like the IES have traditionally focused on how we practice lighting and not who we are as individuals within the profession. That’s not a shortcoming; it’s a matter of organizational purpose. But it underscores why identity-based advocacy must coexist with, and be supported by, the systems that uphold scientific knowledge and practice.
Whether in design, engineering, controls, sales, or distribution, all lighting professionals rely on access to standardization, education, peer networks, and recognition. These roles also depend on organizations like DLC, DSI, IALD, NEMA, and others that advocate for our areas of practice and help define the recipes of good lighting. Through them, the craft of design, the precision of execution, and the values we hold are translated into real-world impact. Their work, like that of the IES, is not just expressive and/or functional, but predictable, repeatable, and responsive to the environments and people it serves.
Without metrics, metrology, and repeatable measurement systems, lighting would fall to guesswork. Standards like IES LM-79, IES TM-30, and file formats such as .ies and .spd allow professionals across disciplines to speak a shared language and make informed, comparable decisions. When we promote and protect these tools, we’re upholding the infrastructure that makes what we do—and who we are as a profession—possible.
I’ve been developing a resource, Why Predicting Light Matters, because, in a gap not unlike our silence on content categorization, the IES doesn’t currently define what an IES file is anywhere on its own website. One of our most globally recognized contributions is something we’ve failed to clearly explain. Yet, at the most fundamental level, light distribution and amount—the basic performance characteristics of light—are what drive every job in this industry. They’re central to our credibility.
This resource is meant to reinforce a simple but often overlooked reality: we rely on prediction. Calculations, spec sheets, photometric data; they determine how light is chosen, applied, evaluated, and sold.
As we look across the lighting industry’s growing landscape of organizations, it’s clear that most new groups have emerged around who we are or what we do. These organizations rooted in identity, equity, or professional function are critical to shaping culture and community. But we don’t see dedicated advocacy groups for actual lighting topics: glare research, diverse visual needs, and modeling lighting, to name a few. That type of advocacy exists, but it’s often integrated into the mission and funding structures of standards bodies like the IES, CIE, and others.
That’s not a flaw. In many ways, it’s an efficient and responsible model. But it’s worth pointing out that the quietest work—building consensus around test methods, advancing human factors research, and maintaining rigorous documentation—is also the work least visible in industry-wide advocacy conversations. If we want to reinforce the value of that work, we need to make it more visible, more discussed, and more intentionally supported across sectors.
We can’t advance lighting education or equity without anchoring both in credible, consensus-based science. Photometry, spectral data, and lumen maintenance may not be trending topics, but they are the quiet infrastructure behind everything from project delivery to environmental advocacy. As we imagine centralized educational efforts, we must not treat this scientific foundation as a niche concern. It is the root system that supports the entire canopy.
Our legitimacy comes from evidence, repeatability, and a willingness to discover—not just deliver. Foundational education and standards don’t belong to any one organization; they belong to the entire profession. The contributors behind those 414 assets may affiliate with any number of the 30+ lighting organizations mentioned in my previous column, but what unites them is a shared investment in defining how light works, and how we communicate that knowledge.
Since the May column, I’ve heard many responses on how the IES didn’t show up in some of the ways the industry had hoped for in the who and what. That’s fair. But it doesn’t change that the IES also has quiet work to do, consistently. It also doesn’t change that we haven’t communicated as we could have to show that work. If we want credibility in practice, advocacy, and policy, we must protect the scientific backbone that makes all three possible.
Brienne Willcock is director of Education and Standards for the IES.