An architect, a lighting designer, and the person who runs the project — the same person.

I am Iara Santos. I am an interior and lighting designer based in Brazil, with six years of practice and three things I am usually doing at once: designing the room, designing the light, and running the project that carries both to construction.

I think these are not three professions. I think they are one practice with three faces, and the studios I admire most are the ones that hold all three at once. This page is here to say what I do, what I have built, and what I am open to.

What I do

Residential at the high end and commercial work where atmosphere is part of the brief. Full design through documentation: floor plans, FF&E specification, custom millwork detailing, reflected ceiling plans, lighting integration. I produce drawing sets to US construction standards — square feet, AFF callouts, IES footcandle guidelines, ADA, IBC, NKBA — using AutoCAD (advanced), SketchUp + Layout (advanced), Dialux Evo (advanced) for photometric work, Enscape for visualization, Revit in training.

Two distinct portfolios live on this site: interior design and lighting design. They speak to each other.

How I got here

I co-founded SIS Arquitetura in 2019 and ran it through 2025 — a full-service interior design and architecture studio, with around 70% residential and 30% commercial work. I delivered more than 150 projects there, end to end, from briefing through punch list. That is the studio chapter.

In parallel, in 2019, I joined a specialized lighting firm in Brazil and grew into the architecture and lighting design coordinator role I hold today. I lead a six-person team and oversee approximately 250 active projects a year, across residential, commercial, hospitality, and corporate work. That is the operations chapter.

What I learned from running both at once is that the operational layer of a design practice is not separate from the craft. It is what allows the craft to scale. Most studios discover this the hard way.

What I built

I built ISSA Project — a project management application designed specifically for interior, lighting, and architecture studios — because every generic tool I tried (Asana, Trello, Notion, ClickUp, an embarrassing series of spreadsheets) eventually broke against the actual texture of how design pipelines work. I built it for my team. It is live, in daily use, and it is now opening to other studios.

The full story of why I built it is here.

What I think I bring

Beyond the technical fluency, what I think I bring to an American residential project is a different center of gravity. The school I trained in privileges natural light, materiality, and the relationship between interior and landscape in a way American residential work tends to under-respect. The technical vocabulary — feet and inches, AFF, IES, ADA — is the entry ticket. The center of gravity is the differentiator. I argue that case more carefully in this study.

Currently

Available immediately for remote collaboration in US time zones. Open to senior interior designer, lighting designer, and design project manager roles with US-based studios — fully remote at first, with openness to relocation and visa sponsorship for the right long-term opportunity. I work independently, take ownership of full project scopes from briefing through delivery, and communicate in English with native fluency in professional contexts.

If you run a studio and what is on this page is the kind of thinking and execution your team needs, I would like to hear about your project.