Both the natural and the artificial light are crucial to the human activity. It wasn’t until recently that lighting condition research has been proven into an important field of study and design. However, the majority of available research refers to the tertiary field, while the data for residential lighting is insufficient.

The goals of this paper, using a small sample of 11 households, are the following:

• the understanding of beliefs concerning artificial lighting, both in general and for the house specifically
• the recording of people’s views of the lighting conditions of their own households
• the measuring of Illuminance and Luminance values in several important spots in each house and the installed power for artificial lighting
• the understanding of the tendencies in residential lighting.

The tools utilised for the research are a questionnaire filled in like an interview, in-situ inspection and measurement of photometric values. The questionnaire-interview aims at recreating the participant’s profile, understanding the way his house functions, discussing how much the available technology has been integrated in the house, finding more profound beliefs concerning lighting and recording the participants’ views on the lighting design of their homes. The in-situ inspection secures the accuracy of the research. Special equipement and software was utilised for the measurement and the analysis of data.

This paper doesn’t claim to arrive to general conclusions. Instead, it acts as a good tool of understanding the tendencies concerning residential lighting and, at the same time, serves as test to demonstrate that this is an accurate tool of understanding reality.