Public realm lighting carries a demand most other lighting disciplines don't have to balance: it has to satisfy a safety classification standard and give a town centre, park, or plaza the atmosphere it was designed to have. Get the calculation wrong, and the space fails a safety review.
Get the design intent wrong, and a technically compliant scheme still feels flat, over-lit, or disconnected from the place it sits in. HLS Consultants is a specialist public realm lighting design consultancy, providing calculation-led, standards-compliant lighting design for town centres, parks, plazas, and public spaces across the United Kingdom, Ireland, and the Middle East.
Whether you're an engineering consultancy running a masterplan-led regeneration scheme, a Tier 1 contractor delivering lighting as part of a town centre redevelopment contract, a local authority relighting a park or plaza, or an infrastructure developer with shared amenity spaces to light within a wider development, our public realm lighting design service is built around one outcome: a scheme engineered to minimise the risk of rework at technical review, without losing the character it was designed to have.
HLS Consultants is a design-only lighting consultancy — we do not supply luminaires and we do not carry out installation, electrical connection works, or statutory approval submissions. What we deliver is the technical and visual backbone of a compliant public realm lighting scheme: the design, the calculations, the verification, and the documentation your team, contractor, or authority needs to move a scheme forward.
Our public realm lighting design service covers town centres, parks, plazas, pedestrianised streets, and other public spaces, for both new build schemes and retrofit or upgrade projects — including relighting of existing public spaces as part of a regeneration scheme, masterplan, or LED conversion. This makes the service equally relevant whether a public space is being lit from scratch as part of a new development, or an existing town centre is being relit to modern classification standards without losing its established character.
Public realm lighting is governed by the same classification discipline as any other lighting scheme — minimum lux levels, uniformity ratios, and glare control, set out under BS EN 13201. But unlike a car park or a stretch of motorway, a town centre, park, or plaza is also a place people actually want to spend time in after dark. A scheme that treats compliance as the only design brief tends to over-light, flattening the character of the space it's meant to serve. A scheme that treats amenity as the only design brief risks failing the classification it was legally required to meet.
This is the balance a specialist public realm lighting design consultancy is built to hold. HLS Consultants treats BS EN 13201 compliance as the non-negotiable floor of every public realm scheme, then designs the layout, fixture selection, and lighting levels within that envelope to meet the amenity, character, and placemaking brief — rather than treating compliance and atmosphere as competing priorities to be traded off against each other.
Public realm lighting work generally falls into one of two categories. New build schemes — a new plaza, a new park, the public realm within a new mixed-use development — start from a clean design brief, where lighting is designed alongside the landscape and public realm masterplan from the outset. Retrofit and relighting schemes start from an existing town centre, park, or plaza, often one with established character, mature planting, heritage buildings, or existing public expectations about how the space looks and feels after dark.
HLS Consultants designs for both. On new build schemes, we work directly from the landscape and public realm design intent to build the lighting layout and calculations from first principles. On retrofit and relighting schemes — including regeneration-led relighting and LED conversion of existing public spaces — we design around the established character of the space, flagging where a change in fixture position or lighting level is genuinely required by the classification calculation, rather than defaulting to a full redesign that discards what already works well in the space
Public realm lighting schemes tend to run into a similar handful of problems, regardless of region. A scheme is designed to satisfy BS EN 13201 classification but loses the character brief in the process, leaving a technically compliant space that still doesn't feel right to the people using it. A scheme is designed around the character brief first, with compliance treated as an afterthought, and the calculation has to be reworked late in the process — creating delay and, often, a compromised final layout. Lighting design proceeds without proper coordination with the landscape architecture or urban design team, resulting in clashes between planting, street furniture, and fixture positions that only surface once construction begins.
Each of these is a sequencing and coordination failure, not a technical one — and each is avoidable with a design process that treats compliance and character as parallel requirements from the outset, and that coordinates directly with the wider landscape and public realm design team rather than designing lighting in isolation. That's the process HLS Consultants applies to every public realm lighting scheme, regardless of scale or region.
Every public realm lighting scheme we design follows the same structured, verifiable process — from the survey data you provide through to a fully checked documentation package ready for submission.
You supply topographical survey data for the space. We carry out desktop assessment using aerial and mapping data to confirm layout, existing features, and surrounding context — no site visit is required from HLS directly. This keeps the design process fast to start and easy to run alongside your landscape or masterplan team’s own workload.
Photometric calculations are carried out first, using Lighting Reality and DIALux, to establish the lux levels, uniformity, and glare control required for the space’s classification. Only once the calculation is correct do we develop the layout in CAD and BIM, coordinated with the landscape and public realm design intent. Calculating before modelling means the layout reflects a design that’s already been verified against the classification, not one that’s checked after the character design is locked in.
Fixture and luminaire specification is selected to meet the required lux levels and uniformity under BS EN 13201 and BS 5489-1, balanced against the visual and amenity brief for the space — rather than defaulting to a generic fixture palette that meets compliance but ignores character.
Calculations and layout are checked against BS EN 13201 and BS 5489-1, and cross-checked against ILP (Institution of Lighting Professionals) guidance, before issue. This verification step happens before the scheme is submitted, not after a reviewer or planning committee flags a shortfall.
The final documentation package is issued in CAD files, PDF documentation, and inventory/schedule data in spreadsheet format — structured to be used directly in your submission or construction process, without your team needing to reformat or rebuild it first.
HLS Consultants designs to the specific classification standards relevant to public realm and amenity lighting in each region, rather than applying a single generic standard across every market:
Confirming the governing standard set with you at the outset of every engagement means there's no ambiguity later — the scheme is designed once, to the right standard and the right brief, rather than adjusted after a reviewer or stakeholder flags a gap.
Public realm lighting design work reaches us through several different routes, and we structure the engagement around how you actually need to use the output.
We provide design capacity for regeneration or masterplan-led public realm schemes, running alongside your landscape design workstream without slowing it down — delivered to the same standard your team would apply if resourced to take it on internally.
Public realm lighting design is delivered as part of a town centre regeneration or plaza redevelopment contract, coordinated to your delivery programme rather than treated as a disconnected specialist workstream.
Public realm lighting design is delivered as part of a town centre regeneration or plaza redevelopment contract, coordinated to your delivery programme rather than treated as a disconnected specialist workstream.
We support town centre and park relighting schemes that need to satisfy BS EN 13201 compliance without losing heritage character or placemaking intent, packaged in a format built for straightforward technical and stakeholder sign-off.
We support town centre and park relighting schemes that need to satisfy BS EN 13201 compliance without losing heritage character or placemaking intent, packaged in a format built for straightforward technical and stakeholder sign-off.
Where a development includes shared amenity spaces — a plaza, a park, a pedestrianised street — we deliver public realm lighting design for those spaces as part of the wider mixed-use or masterplan scheme.
Where a development includes shared amenity spaces — a plaza, a park, a pedestrianised street — we deliver public realm lighting design for those spaces as part of the wider mixed-use or masterplan scheme.
We provide design capacity for regeneration or masterplan-led public realm schemes, running alongside your landscape design workstream without slowing it down — delivered to the same standard your team would apply if resourced to take it on internally.
UK and Irish public realm schemes are both designed to BS 5489-1 and BS EN 13201, applied consistently across amenity lighting practice in both markets. Middle East schemes are calculated to BS EN 13201 classification principles and coordinated with the relevant local authority's requirements for the space's location. We confirm the governing standard set with you at project kickoff so there's no ambiguity at review stage.
We treat BS EN 13201 classification as the non-negotiable baseline, then design the layout, fixture selection, and lighting levels within that envelope to meet the amenity and character brief. Compliance sets the floor — it doesn't dictate the design.
Yes 3D lighting visualization is available at design stage, so the scheme can be reviewed and signed off by non-technical stakeholders before it's locked into technical documentation.
Yes — public realm schemes are rarely lighting-only. We coordinate layout and fixture positioning with the wider landscape and public realm design team rather than designing lighting in isolation.
: We work from client-supplied topographical survey data plus desktop assessment using aerial and mapping data. Where a physical visit is genuinely needed to capture site-specific detail, we coordinate it through our delivery partners in the UK and Ireland on a chargeable basis.
We're a design consultancy — fixture supply, installation, electrical connection works, and heritage or conservation-area consultation sit outside our scope. What you receive is CAD files, PDF documentation, and inventory/schedule data in spreadsheet format, structured to be submission-ready.
Yes. We regularly design the public realm lighting for a specific space — a plaza, a park, a pedestrianised street — as one coordinated package alongside the residential, car park, or highway lighting for the same development, so the whole scheme is designed with a consistent standard and approach.
Partner with HLS Consultants for expert lighting design, backed by electrical design and CAD/BIM expertise.
Partner with HLS Consultants for expert lighting design, backed by electrical design and CAD/BIM expertise.
B-128, Ist Floor, Sector 2, Noida, Gautam Buddha Nagar- 201301, Uttar Pradesh
Copyrights© 2026 HLS Consultants (OPC) Pvt. Ltd. (CIN: U71100UW2026OPC256882). All rights reserved.
