Lighting Designer Quote Differences: The Information Granularity Behind Clients' Price Complaints

Yesterday I wrote an article titled "Lighting Bang: Why Some Lighting Designers Quote 300 and Clients Complain It's Expensive, While Others Quote 3000 and It's Accepted?" and found a comment saying:

【There's no need for all that complexity. It's simply about who has more money. You're just rambling. Technicians always like to make simple things complicated.】

Alright, here's today's topic.

Honestly, I think this comment is quite valuable.

Because it perfectly exposes a common issue: different people see different levels of information granularity for the same thing.

Some designers only consider how much time and effort they spend and whether the client has money.

Others consider where the design fee actually comes from, who pays it, who it's for, the decision-making chain, the risk level, what result it brings, and where the client places it in their mind.

Clearly, these are two different levels.

Whether a client is willing to spend money is certainly related to whether they have money—no argument there.

But the problem is, stopping at "who has more money" is too coarse.

Because in reality, we often see counterintuitive situations.

Some people aren't particularly wealthy but are very generous with certain things.

Some people are very wealthy but are extremely frugal about certain things.

The same person might find a piece of clothing expensive but not mind spending on their child's interest classes.

The same boss might find design fees expensive but not mind treating clients to dinner.

The same project might find spending a few thousand on preliminary design expensive, but later, due to wrong direction, spending tens of thousands on rework is reluctantly accepted.

See? This can't be explained by "who has more money."

What really matters is what that money represents in their mind.

As mentioned in the article "Lighting Bang: Why Some Lighting Designers Quote 300 and Clients Complain It's Expensive, While Others Quote 3000 and It's Accepted?", the client's price perception comes from the exchange method.

The same amount of money, if the client feels they are buying a picture, they will find it expensive.

If the client feels they are buying a chance for a successful presentation, project progress, or avoiding pitfalls, their perception of the price changes.

It's not that the money changes; it's that the money's position in their mind changes.

Let me give more examples:

For instance, souvenirs at tourist attractions—many people think they're expensive at first glance.

A gift box costs two or three hundred, but the materials might only be a fraction of that. However, some retired elderly people on a tour group think, "I don't come here often, let me buy something to take back," and they buy it without hesitation.

From a cost perspective, you'd think it's not worth it.

But from the perspective of travel, souvenirs, gifts, and mood, that money doesn't feel as heavy.

Another example: pets. Some people have lived with their cat for five or six years. If the cat gets lost, they are willing to spend thousands to find it.

From the perspective of someone who doesn't own pets, it's hard to understand.

It's just a cat—why spend so much money?

But from the owner's perspective, it's not just an ordinary cat.

It's years of companionship, emotional support, and a familiar presence waiting at home every day.

The money is still the same.

It's just that what it exchanges for is different.

In fact, many people habitually compress complex problems into simple conclusions to avoid thinking about more details.

But those details often determine success or failure.

I remember writing before that when I first started, I made a lighting rendering and felt quite satisfied.

But when I showed it to the manager, he said it wasn't good.

I was devastated at the time.

Because I really couldn't see what was wrong.

Later, after years in the industry and many projects, I could also spot many issues in others' renderings at a glance:

Whether the perspective is correct, whether the color temperature is accurate, whether the light-dark relationship has layers, whether local details are blurry, whether the overall image has depth, and whether the lighting logic matches the building.

Beginners can't see these things.

It's not that their eyes can't see.

It's that they don't have these judgment dimensions in their minds.

Only then did I realize that back then, the manager wasn't making things complicated.

It was that I was looking too coarsely; my information granularity wasn't fine enough to reach a professional level.

I once saw Elon Musk talk about hiring, and I agreed with one point: to judge whether someone has truly solved problems, you need to ask for details.

A person who hasn't truly experienced and solved problems cannot know those details.

Just like a resume can be faked and behavior can be pretended, but the information granularity of viewing and solving specific problems is basically impossible to fake.