After a long Saint-Tropezian night of dining, dancing and meeting this season’s glitterati, you return with your amour at 5 a.m. to your motor yacht. The idea is to retreat to the vessel’s private realm and quietly observe "rosy-fingered dawn" appear over the Mediterranean just as it did in Homer’s day.

As you step on board, entering aft, and proceed through the salon’s double doors, you’re hit with blinding, shocking light that instantly ruins the Homeric mood. The salon light has been set way too bright. You feel your pupils closing down, making it impossible to see out, much less see that rosy-fingered dawn.

This is a key challenge for yacht designers today: to make sure that everything in the interior, especially the lighting, enhances the owner’s mood and doesn’t disturb it. Transitions from the dark aft section to the salon should be gentle, both psychologically and emotionally intelligent. A dinner lighting scheme set on your Crestron or Lantic keypad should be very different from one set for business meetings. All the latest technical innovations must be brought into play aboard a motor yacht, and at $1 million per meter, is that really too much to ask?

Advances in lighting can create a range of moods from romantic, to wake-up call (shown here). Photograph by Matteo Piazza. (Click image to enlarge)

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"Lighting becomes a portrait of our client," says Lazzarini. "It has to fit how our client imagines life aboard that boat."

Whether it’s the Wally 118, Benetti’s 115-foot Sai Ram or Stefano Gabbana’s 167-foot Regina d’Italia, all are unique, but at the same time linked to the firm’s sensitivity to the various effects of light on mood. "Serene theatricality" is the firm’s modus operandi. Nowhere is this more evident than on Gabbana’s yacht, whose fashion firm Dolce & Gabbana has serene theatricality down to a T.

"He didn’t want any diffused lighting at all on the Regina," says Pickering, "just halogens spotlighting various objects and fabrics. He wanted us to pick those out and distinguish them."

Seamless lighting schemes blur the distinction between outside and in. Photograph by Matteo Piazza. (Click image to enlarge)

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"It’s still top secret. All I can say is that it involves a CAD (computer-aided design) system ordinarily used for industrial sewing patterns, called Polytropon." Also on the drawing boards for the Nauta is an anti-reflective night-vision glass that encases an internal Freon-based filter. "We’re still waiting until the glass is finished before we decide to use it or not."

Before the advent of LEDs, crew had to check daily for burned-out halogen bulbs. Photograph by Matteo Piazza. (Click image to enlarge)

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His partner Pickering adds: "The Las Vegas concept of lighting pervading the industry now makes me seasick. We were in Monte-Carlo looking out at the show and all the yachts were turning red, green and blue with special effects. That’s the antithesis of what we’re trying to achieve. What we’re aiming for is cozy, intimate, warm light with a golden quality. One that is, as I said before, serenely theatrical."Designers Tim Saunders and Rupert Rainsford Mann of Rainsford Saunders Design (RSD) teamed up in 2001 with the objective of specializing in the naval architecture, exterior styling and interior design of yachts in the 16- to 170-meter range. Prior to the launch of RSD, Saunders worked with some of the world’s finest superyacht designers such as Andrew Winch, Espen Øino, Frank Mulder, Felix Buytendijk and Pieter Beeldsnijder. After four years of intensive work, the RSD team is soon to begin overseeing construction of a 170-meter behemoth, potentially the largest superyacht on the planet. The LED revolution in lighting would seem a perfect match for such an undertaking. LEDs (light-emitting diodes) are not only more affordable, but they also cast a richer quality light, according to Saunders. And the technological advantages of LEDs are huge.

"Captains frequently complain that first thing every morning they have to send their crews around the entire boat to see if there are any burned-out halogen bulbs," says Saunders. "LEDs can last 40,000 hours, and they use a fraction of the energy. The biggest advantage, however, is that the LEDs are completely programmable, unlike the gas-filled bulbs of the past. Hooked up to a PC, they can be set to emit literally millions of colors."

Putting this directional and programmable attribute of LEDs into practice, one can see that talented designers like Saunders are going to immediately find a way to open up spaces. Through lighting they’re going to make rooms truly multipurpose. Instead of a business conference room and a dining room, they’re now going to design just one room but with very different lighting schemes. Press "1" on your remote for high-contrast, task-oriented business, and then press "2" for candlelit dining enhanced by backlit silks. By automating or using a remote, one can say: "By eight o’clock in the evening I want blue to fade in by ten percent. By 8:30 I want it to increase thirty percent and at midnight 100 percent."

A cantilevered glass staircase designed by RSD, which Saunders describes as a series of rectangles coming out of the wall, is another example of saving space. As clear glass, it’s almost invisible, allowing both natural and artificial light to enter from above, making the room look bigger and less cluttered. When you step on the preceding step a pressure sensor activates an LCD laminated-in filter, also known as a privy light, and electrically makes the glass opaque, momentarily reducing light fall and thereby offering reassurance that you’re not walking on air.

LED technology offers limitless possibilities such as these, but, warns Saunders, "clients only want a few tailor-made options that are personalized to the individual. We usually need to limit lighting schemes to just three or four. Otherwise, you spend your whole life playing with the controls and you get bored by the whole thing." And bored with lighting is not the mood you want to ever be in.