The Designers Lighting Forum of New York (DLFNY) has announced the winners of its 2026 Beacon Awards, recognizing outstanding achievements in architectural lighting design and lighting products across 10 categories.
The winning projects represent a range of applications, including residential, hospitality, commercial, exterior, cultural, and experiential environments. The awards also recognize innovation in architectural and decorative lighting products.
This year’s recipients include projects from Spark Studio, Focus Lighting, Lighting Beyond LLC, Cline Bettridge Bernstein Lighting Design, and Andrea Steele Architecture, alongside products from Focal Point and Starco Lighting.
2026 Beacon Award Winners
New York Project
Fordham University McShane Campus Center
Lighting Design: Spark Studio
Lighting was conceived as part of the mass-timber architecture, not an applied layer. Across the school, fixtures align with exposed CLT, glulam, and structural bays, minimizing penetrations while reinforcing the warmth and rhythm of the timber. The second challenge was night use: the building serves as both a school and a community asset, with the rooftop soccer field, gym, and outdoor areas active after hours. Lighting supports safe, flexible public use while limiting spill and brightness toward nearby residences. The result is a restrained system that makes structure, material, and community use legible by day and night.
Residential: 35 Fox Ridge
Lighting Design: Focus Lighting
The lines between inside and out are blurred into one glowing landscape at this modern home in upstate NY. Charged with the challenge to create a house that felt like a lantern glowing in the forest, the lighting designers filled each room with soft light bouncing off warm materials and emanating through the walls of glazing. To amplify the feeling of interconnection with the surrounding landscape, hidden accents lights were placed around corners and beneath overhangs to gently throw light into the surrounding foliage. The resulting composition established this residence as a beacon in the dark woods.
Hospitality: Limusina
Lighting Design: Focus Lighting
The maximalist design aesthetic of the client didn’t stop at the interiors for this project – it spilled over into the lighting design when he proclaimed he wanted “more”, including the desire to see every light a different color. When faced with this challenge, the designers rose to the occasion, testing materials, doing mockups, and employing color-tuning and lighting gels like never before. The resulting symphony of amber and rosy hues washes over this chaotic space in blanket of warmth, while surprising lighting details and pops of contrast punctuate the design and tie the spaces together in an intoxicating rhythm.
Focus Lighting Accepts the Hospitality Award for Limusina, which was featured in the October Edition of designing lighting (dl) magazine
Hospitality: The Penrose Room at The Broadmoor Hotel
Lighting Design: Focus Lighting
Sophistication and old-world charm abound in this high-end restaurant perched atop a hotel tower with sweeping views. The designers had many challenges to contend with in order to execute a design that met the client’s standards: existing ceiling conditions that caused many a conflict, copious amounts of windows, necessitating warm-dim lighting fixtures to shift with the ever-changing quality and intensity of daylight, and a budget fit for a small renovation rather than the grand overhaul that the design team envisioned. The end result was a thoughtful design that embodied the grandeur of this famous resort, but with modern sensibilities.
The Focus Lighting Team Poses with the award for Hospitality
Commercial: 200 Clarendon
Lighting Design: Focus Lighting
The amenity floor at this corporate building holds a collection of unique spaces. A hallway designed as a series of art galleries connects them with halo-lit portals, creating a repetition of glowing archways. A social lobby employs warm-dim lighting so that as daylight fades, warmth ramps up. Lighting details elevate the conference rooms, and a library with integrated millwork lighting invites guests to pause. Informal meeting rooms feature a ceiling of fiber points, arranged in a constellation. The lighting design is a thread that runs through each of these spaces, creating an experience for guests that feels varied yet cohesive.
Brett Andersen, Partner, Focus Lighting, Accepts the Commercial Award for 200 Clarendon
Exterior (Article Cover Image): 1221 Avenue of the Americas East Plaza Renovation
Lighting Design: Lighting Beyond LLC
This project transforms a 24/7 outdoor Manhattan plaza into a refined urban oasis. Lighting responds to contrasting conditions: a bustling sunken retail plaza, a shaded upper plaza for respite, and a perimeter of chaotic street life. Modified streetlights and a warm 3000K palette unify the site, while concealed details—planter-edge uplights, moonlight effects, a luminous elevator shaft, and rhythmic guardrail lighting—balance artistry and technical precision. 20 lux minimum illuminance was provided to comply with zoning requirements without poles or bollards, using durable, efficient luminaires.
Architectural Product Design: Saros Duo Render
Company: Focal Point
This project transforms a 24/7 outdoor Manhattan plaza into a refined urban oasis. Lighting responds to contrasting conditions: a bustling sunken retail plaza, a shaded upper plaza for respite, and a perimeter of chaotic street life. Modified streetlights and a warm 3000K palette unify the site, while concealed details—planter-edge uplights, moonlight effects, a luminous elevator shaft, and rhythmic guardrail lighting—balance artistry and technical precision. 20 lux minimum illuminance was provided to comply with zoning requirements without poles or bollards, using durable, efficient luminaires.
Decorative Product Design: Cloudplume
Company: Starco Lighting Inc.
This project transforms a 24/7 outdoor Manhattan plaza into a refined urban oasis. Lighting responds to contrasting conditions: a bustling sunken retail plaza, a shaded upper plaza for respite, and a perimeter of chaotic street life. Modified streetlights and a warm 3000K palette unify the site, while concealed details—planter-edge uplights, moonlight effects, a luminous elevator shaft, and rhythmic guardrail lighting—balance artistry and technical precision. 20 lux minimum illuminance was provided to comply with zoning requirements without poles or bollards, using durable, efficient luminaires.
Starco Lighting Inc. Accepts the Award for Cloudplume
Cultural Institution: Gould Memorial Library Rotunda
Lighting Design: Cline Bettridge Bernstein Lighting Design
Gould Memorial Library, designed by McKim, Mead & White, is inspired by Rome’s Pantheon and designated a national Historic Landmark. The domed interior was originally lit by a skylight, but a plaster ceiling was added underneath, with high-pressure sodium pendant fixtures lighting the space. Meeting the challenge of the landmark requirements to use the existing ceiling openings, new LED fixtures are designed with custom diffusers to replace the HID pendants and attach to the catwalk above. The new solution allows all the surfaces to display their true colors. The architecture is now truly visible and receives the appreciation it deserves.
Experiential: The Beacon
Firm: Andrea Steele Architecture
Can illuminating a community’s stories create a safer, more welcoming public space than standard street lighting?
This project uses light as a welcoming invitation to connect. Located at a busy Bedford-Stuyvesant transit crossroads, the temporary installation brightens a dark sunken plaza. Three structures align to form an “X,” honoring Black history. By illuminating community-designed art panels with soft, motion-responsive light, the space feels cared for and active. Shining light directly onto these neighborhood stories creates a profound, permanent shift in how this corner is perceived, leaving a lasting positive impact long after the physical structures are relocated.
Recognizing Excellence in Lighting
Focus Lighting received recognition in four categories, including Residential, Commercial, and two Hospitality projects.
The winning projects highlight the breadth of contemporary lighting design, from hospitality interiors and residential spaces to public plazas, cultural landmarks, and architectural products.
Together, the 2026 Beacon Award recipients showcase the diverse contributions of lighting designers, architects, and manufacturers to the built environment.