Jo Calver is the Founder and Creative Director of Isla James Interiors and Isla James Lighting, where light is considered as fundamental to a space as its architecture, materials and form. 

Since founding Isla James Interiors in 2015, Jo has developed a distinctive approach that brings interior architecture, interior design and architectural lighting together from the earliest stages of a project. Rather than treating lighting as a final layer, she considers light part of the material palette itself, something that shapes our perception of architecture, colour and texture, reveals artwork and detail, directs the eye and ultimately determines how a space feels. 

Her work spans high-end residential and hospitality projects across the UK and abroad, including The Gate Hotel in London and The Store in Oxford, combining creative design thinking with a detailed understanding of architectural lighting, colour temperature, control, specification and the interaction between light and materials. 

Alongside her project work, Jo is building a growing voice within the design industry around a more ambitious way of thinking about light. Through platforms including LiGHT and Clerkenwell Design Week, and through the evolution of Isla James Lighting and its educational programme, she is challenging the convention that lighting comes after the design – advocating instead for light to be considered from the very first creative decisions. Her ambition is to inspire designers to see light not simply as illumination, but as a powerful design material in its own right: capable of revealing architecture, heightening materiality, influencing wellbeing and transforming the way a space is experienced. 

At the heart of Jo’s work is the belief that the most powerful interiors are not simply lit – they are shaped by light. When light is considered from the very beginning, it becomes more than illumination; it becomes architecture, atmosphere and experience. 

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