Lighting is the most important design decision in a home.
Barbara Cosgrove built a lamp business around that conviction for 25 years. Today, we connect design-conscious homeowners with the small network of installers who hold the same standard. The mission hasn’t changed. Only how we serve it.
As featured in
- Elle Decor
- House Beautiful
- Apartment Therapy
- Country Living
Twenty-five years of telling people that lighting is design.
Barbara Cosgrove founded the studio in 1998 with a simple thesis: most American homes are over-furnished and under-lit. For twenty-five years, the studio designed brass and ceramic lamps that ended up in the editorial portfolios of Elle Decor, House Beautiful, Apartment Therapy, and Country Living.
The lamps weren’t expensive for the sake of being expensive. They were heavy because brass weighs more than aluminum, finished by hand because hand-finishing reads at every angle, designed in three pieces because three is the number of light sources a sophisticated room actually wants.
Over those years, we received tens of thousands of customer notes. Most were thank-you cards. A surprising number weren’t about the lamps at all.
The lamp was rarely the problem. The installer was.
“Customers wrote us about their lamps. They also wrote us about something else. They couldn’t find an installer who understood what we did.”
They’d buy a beautiful brass uplight for an oak tree and watch a contractor angle it to flood the bark white. They’d plan a $30,000 landscape lighting project and end up with three floodlights pointed at their windows. They’d choose us specifically for the design quality of a fixture and then watch that fixture get installed in a way that made the room worse.
By 2023, we’d built a brand around lighting as design. And the limiting factor for the homeowners who cared about that wasn’t access to good fixtures. It was access to installers who would treat lighting the way we always had: as architecture, not utility.
Same mission. New form.
In 2024, we stopped making lamps. It was the harder choice. We had a viable business and a brand that meant something to the people who knew it. But the design mission had reached its limit on the fixture side.
We became the connection instead. Today, we maintain a small, vetted network of licensed lighting installers across the US. Chosen for their design sensibility first, technical credentials second. When a design-conscious homeowner submits a project, we match them with two or three of those installers. The homeowners pay nothing. The installers pay only when they win the work.
It’s the same Barbara Cosgrove standard. Applied to who’s holding the wire, not what they’re wiring.
Five principles we’ve held since 1998.
01
Lighting is design, not utility.
A bedroom lit by one overhead fixture is a worse room than the same bedroom with a layered plan. Even on a tighter budget. We design installs around how a space wants to feel at night, not where wiring is easiest.
02
Brass over plastic. Every time.
A brass landscape fixture lasts 15-25 years. A plastic one fails within 2-3 freeze-thaw seasons. The cheaper quote is rarely the cheaper install across a property’s lifetime.
03
The installer matters more than the fixture.
We’ve watched beautiful fixtures get installed in places that ruined the room. We’ve watched modest fixtures transform homes when placed alongside an actual design plan. The installer is the variable.
04
Free for homeowners. Always.
We’re paid by installers when they win the work. Never by the homeowners we connect them to. No fees, no obligation, no upsells. Quality competes on its merits.
05
Local installers. Never national chains.
Lighting is regional. The installer who knows your climate, your architecture, your local plant palette will design a better project than a chain that subcontracts every job out.
Barbara Cosgrove. Sculptor, lamp designer, painter.
Three steps. No phone trees. No friction.
From inquiry to installation. Engineered to be the fastest way to find a quality lighting installer in your area.
01
Tell us about your project
Zip code, the service you need, your contact info. 60 seconds. No account creation. No phone tree.
02
We route to local installers
Licensed lighting pros in your area receive your project and reach out. Typically within 24 hours.
03
Compare. Choose. Or don’t.
Free, no-obligation quotes. Hire who you want, when you want. There’s no fee for using the service.
$0
Homeowner fees. Installers pay only when they earn your business
0
Lighting services covered, from outdoor to smart-home
0
Licensed and insured installers. No exceptions
<0
Average inquiry-to-first-contact response time
Free quotes. Licensed installers. 24-hour response.
Get free quotes in 24 hours.
No obligation. No fee. Licensed installers only.
Or reach out directly.
No fee · No spam · No obligation. Installers pay us only when they earn your business.