Privacy

We collect the details you give us so that we can handle your request and the work that follows, and we use them only for the purposes this notice lists. We pass details on only to the businesses that help with your work and to the companies that run our website and email. We don't sell your information, and we don't share it for advertising. Letting us remember your preferences and receiving our marketing email are two separate choices: both are optional, and neither is switched on unless you tick its box. The public pages of this website set no cookies and use no analytics or advertising trackers.

This website and the studio are run by Atelier Belle LLC, doing business as KW Lighting. You can reach us about privacy:

• by email at info@kwlighting.com;
• by phone on (650) 592-2780;
• by post to KW Lighting, 425 Harbor Blvd, Suite C, Belmont, CA 94002;
• in person at the studio, at the same address.

There are four request forms: a quote, a consultation, a trade account inquiry and a repair. Each form marks the fields you can leave out; the others are needed to handle that kind of request.

From every form:

• your name;
• an email address, a phone number, or both (at least one, so we can reply);
• whether you'd rather we email or call, if you choose;
• your OK for us to contact you about the request, which we record with the exact wording you agreed to and the date and time.

Two optional choices. The forms also offer two boxes that are not ticked unless you tick them: one lets us remember your preferences for future projects, the other signs you up for our marketing email. You can tick either, both or neither, and your request is handled the same way whatever you choose. For each box you tick, we record the exact wording, its version, the date and time, the form you used and, later, any withdrawal.

Depending on the form:

• Quote: your company or property name and your role; a lighting schedule, or the items you want quoted with quantities; and, if you give them, the date you need each item, photos, a project name and timing. You also tell us whether alternates are acceptable. We record the domain of your email address (for example, example.com) so we can keep requests from the same company together.
• Consultation: whether you'd like to meet in the studio, at your place or by video and, only for a visit at your place, the address for the visit; if you give them, the room, a preferred time and notes.
• Trade account inquiry: your business name and type; if you choose to give them, your CSLB contractor licence number, notes and a resale certificate.
• Repair: the kind of piece and what's wrong with it; if you add them, notes and photos.

Business details on the trade form. A contractor licence number and a resale certificate are business information. A California resale certificate usually shows your seller's permit number, your business name and address and a signature. We use them to review your inquiry and, if we open an account for you, to support resale-exempt invoicing.

Please don't send identity documents, Social Security numbers or payment-card details through this website: we don't need them for any request. There is no online payment and there are no customer accounts on this website.

If your request goes ahead, we may ask you for what that work needs, such as a delivery address, and we keep the records of the order or repair.

When your browser contacts the website, our servers receive your IP address and basic information about your browser, as every website does. The website uses the IP address for a short time to limit repeated requests, such as many forms sent in a few minutes, and does not save it with your request. The services that host the website may also record this technical information in their logs, which we use only to run and secure the website.

We use your information only for these purposes, and only as far as each one needs it:

• Your request and the work that follows: quotes, orders, consultations, trade accounts and repairs, including delivery, payment records and support afterwards.
• Sourcing and recommendations: finding the right products and alternates for your project.
• Running and improving our business: understanding demand, pricing and which quotes go ahead; supplier quality, lead times and returns; repair quality, parts planning and recurring faults; forecasting, improving how we work, and keeping our own know-how.
• Records and security: keeping the records the law requires, and keeping our website and records secure.

We don't use your information for any other purpose without telling you first. For analysis we use information without names whenever knowing who you are adds nothing. We treat a customer number or other code as personal information, not as anonymous, and we don't report on groups so small, or on projects, photos or notes so distinctive, that someone could be recognised.

When you send a request with an email address, the website sends you one automatic confirmation. After that we may email or call you about your request, order or repair. These are service messages: you receive them whether or not you sign up for marketing, and you never need to sign up to get our service. If you gave only a phone number, we reply by phone.

Marketing email is a separate choice. You can sign up by ticking the marketing box on a form. It is never ticked for you, we don't sign up existing customers automatically, and letting us remember your preferences doesn't sign you up. You can unsubscribe at any time by contacting us, or from the unsubscribe link in any marketing email we send; we then keep a short record of your email address so that we don't send you marketing again. We haven't started sending marketing email yet.

This website doesn't send text messages, and we don't send marketing texts.

If you tick the box that lets us remember your preferences, we keep the style, finish and fixture details from your request, and any room notes you shared, so you don't have to repeat them next time. We never add your contact details, addresses or files to it. Saying no doesn't change the service you get.

You can withdraw this permission at any time by contacting us, and we then delete what the profile holds. Withdrawing doesn't delete the records we must keep, such as invoices, and doesn't change your marketing choice.

If there has been no meaningful contact between us for 24 months, we delete what the profile holds unless you renew your permission. Meaningful contact means something you do: sending us a request, contacting us yourself, accepting a quote, collecting a repair, or renewing your permission. Our own activity in our records, and anything automatic, doesn't count.

If you buy from us or have repairs done with us, we keep a short factual history of that work, such as the fixtures and parts we supplied, repairs done and the outcome of any guarantee claims. It helps us match parts, replace fixtures and repair pieces we've seen before, so we keep it while there is a documented reason to.

After three years without meaningful contact we review it, and delete anything that no longer has a reason to be kept, or keep it only as part of a pooled statistic that doesn't describe you. The review doesn't delete everything automatically, and it isn't a reason to keep everything either: it doesn't extend the limit of 24 months on preference profiles, and it doesn't mean every photo or file is kept.

• Some forms let you attach files: photos (JPG or PNG), lighting schedules (PDF, XLSX, CSV, JPG or PNG) and a resale certificate (PDF, JPG or PNG), up to 25 MB each. Files are uploaded when you choose them; the rest of the form is sent only when you send it. We keep each file's name as well as its content.
• We accept a file only after it has been checked for malware. Whenever checking isn't available, including before our checking service is set up, the website doesn't take files; you can still send your request without them.
• Before a JPG or PNG file is stored, we remove its hidden details, such as the location where a photo was taken and the camera used (EXIF and GPS data). If we can't remove them, we don't keep the file, and the form asks you to send it another way.
• We don't accept HEIC files, the usual iPhone photo format, because we can't reliably remove those details from them. The form tells you how to send the photo as a JPG instead.
• We don't change PDF, spreadsheet or CSV files, so their content and any hidden details inside them, such as an author's name, stay as you sent them.
• Files you upload but don't send with a request are kept for no more than 24 hours. If you come back to a saved form after that, the form tells you which files to add again.
• If you've asked us to repair a piece, our confirmation email can include a private link for adding photos to that same request. The link works for a limited time, and the email tells you the last day you can use it. Those photos go through the same checks. Please use the link rather than replying with photos.
• If you email us photos or files instead, for example by replying to our confirmation, they reach our mailbox exactly as you sent them, hidden details included.
• Files are stored privately. They have no public web address, and only signed-in KW staff can open them, once they are part of a request you have sent. We never use your photos publicly, on our website, in social media or in marketing, without your separate permission.

• KW staff. Only people on our staff list can sign in to our system, and each person can do only what their role allows. When a new request arrives, staff get an email alert with the request number and a short summary made only from the choices on the form, such as the type of request, the room or fixture type you picked, how many files you attached and whether you added notes. The alert doesn't include your name, email address, phone number or anything you wrote. Staff open the full request in our system.
• Suppliers and distributors, to price, check and order the items on your quote.
• Manufacturers' representatives, to get prices, specifications, alternates or help with a product.
• Delivery companies, to deliver your order.
• Outside repair specialists, when part of a repair needs specialist work.
• Companies that provide services to us, and only so that they can provide them: the companies that host the website, its database and the files you send, the companies that provide our email, and any service we use to check files for malware.
• Others only when the law requires it, for example in response to a valid legal order, or to protect people's safety or our legal rights.

We give the businesses that help with your work only the details they need for it.

AI and other service providers. We don't currently send your information to any AI service. Before we use any service provider, AI or otherwise, with information that identifies you, we check what it can access, its security, how long it keeps information, the other companies it uses and its contract terms. We don't allow a provider to use your information to train its own general models. Any proposal to use your information to train a model needs a separate review and, where the law requires it, your permission. A person reviews every quote, and we don't use automated systems to make credit decisions about you.

We don't sell your personal information. We don't share it for cross-context behavioural advertising, which is advertising based on what you do on other websites, and we don't give it to other companies for their own marketing.

• No cookies on the public pages. The public pages of this website, including the request forms, set no cookies and load no analytics, advertising or social media trackers.
• Saved form progress in your browser. While you fill in a form, what you have entered is saved in your browser's session storage for that tab, on your device, so a reload doesn't lose it. This is not a cookie and is not sent to us. It is removed when you send the form or choose to start over, and saved progress more than 7 days old is not offered again and is removed. Browsers normally clear session storage when the tab is closed.
• Your confirmation. After you send a request, the confirmation page keeps your request number, how we'll reply and a short summary of the options you picked (such as the type of fixture or how many files you attached) in that tab's session storage, so it can show them to you. It doesn't keep your name, contact details or anything you typed. After 30 minutes the confirmation is no longer shown, and it is removed the next time a confirmation page is opened in that tab. Nothing about your request is put in the page's web address.
• Fonts and maps. Our fonts are served from our own website. Directions links open Google Maps only if you click them; Google's privacy policy then applies.
• Staff sign-in. The separate staff area is protected by Google's sign-in, which uses its own cookies in staff members' browsers. Visitors to the public website don't reach it.

Do Not Track is a browser setting that asks websites not to follow your activity over time and across other websites. We don't do that, and we don't let anyone else collect information about your activity on our website over time or across other sites.

Global Privacy Control is a browser signal that asks a business not to sell or share your personal information. We don't sell personal information or share it for cross-context behavioural advertising, so there is nothing for the signal to switch off.

Either way, every visitor is treated the same whether or not their browser sends these signals.

This is our retention schedule. Information we are required to keep, and information under a documented legal hold, such as during a dispute or claim, is kept for as long as that requires, even past these periods. When one request reaches its limit, we don't delete the rest of your history with it.

• Files uploaded but never sent with a request: 24 hours.
• Requests that don't lead to any work: we delete the details that identify you 12 months after your last substantive contact with us about it, unless the matter is still active or we must keep a record.
• Ordinary project and repair photos: two years after the work is completed and the request is closed, whichever is later, except particular photos we keep as evidence for a documented reason, such as a guarantee claim.
• Essential records, such as accepted quotes, repair authorisations, invoices, payments and the messages that go with them: we propose seven years. The point the period starts from, and its exceptions, are being confirmed with our accountant and legal adviser.
• Resale certificates: while they support an active trade relationship, and then for as long as we keep the records of the last sales they supported.
• Preference profiles: deleted after 24 months without meaningful contact, unless you renew your permission.
• Your history with us: reviewed after three years without meaningful contact, as described above.
• Business summaries: we plan to keep long-term only summaries for each quarter that pool counts together and never describe one person, and to review from time to time whether they are still useful. We don't keep any such summary yet.
• Routine security logs: 30 days, except extracts we need to investigate a particular incident.
• Backup copies: our database is backed up automatically every day, and we keep the 14 most recent of these backups, so normally about two weeks of them, together with up to 7 days of change records for point-in-time recovery. Older automatic backups are deleted as new ones are made. If we make a backup by hand, for example before maintenance, we keep it only as long as that work needs and then delete it. Deleted files can stay in our storage's recovery copies for up to 7 days. If we ever restore a backup, we re-apply deletions and withdrawn choices before using it.

Where we are now. The tools that apply this schedule automatically are built but not switched on yet. Until they are, some information can be kept longer than these periods. If you ask us to delete something, we deal with your request as described under Your choices and rights, whatever the schedule says.

Files are kept in private storage that only signed-in staff can reach through our system. Staff sign in through Google's sign-in, and our system checks each person against our staff list and their role. No system is perfectly secure, but we take reasonable care to protect what you send us. If a security breach affects your personal information, we will tell you as California law requires.

You can ask us at any time to:

• tell you what personal information we hold about you and give you a copy;
• correct information that is wrong;
• delete your information;
• stop remembering your preferences, or stop sending you marketing email.

How to ask. Email info@kwlighting.com, call (650) 592-2780, write to us at 425 Harbor Blvd, Suite C, Belmont, CA 94002, or ask us at the studio.

What happens next. We acknowledge your request within five business days and aim to complete it within 45 calendar days. If the law sets a shorter deadline, we meet it; if the law allows us more time and we need it, we tell you why. We check it's you by matching your request with the contact details we hold, and we send what you asked for only to those details.

Correction. We replace details that are wrong in our records, so that we use the corrected details from then on. Messages waiting to be sent are stopped and, where needed, sent again with the corrected details. Copies of messages we have already sent keep what they said, unless you ask us to delete them.

Deletion. We delete your information, or permanently remove the details that identify you, from our request records, contact details, files, notes, copies of our messages, your preference profile and your history with us. We keep only what the law requires us to keep, such as sale and tax records, or what is under a documented legal hold, and we tell you what we keep and why. How our systems are built is never a reason for us to keep your information.

A few records stay, without your name or contact details: a note of which choices were made and withdrawn, and when; if you unsubscribed from marketing email, a one-way coded form of your email address, so that we never send you marketing email again; the coded outcome of each request, such as whether a quote went ahead, under its request number; and a record of the deletion itself, with request numbers and coded forms of your email address and phone number, so that we can repeat the deletion if we ever restore a backup. We currently keep these deletion records with no end date: they are stored in a separate, write-protected log for at least 400 days, and we have not yet set a date for removing older ones. They contain no names or messages, and your email address and phone number appear in them only in coded form. Someone who has a request number, your email address or your phone number could still link these records to you, so we protect them like the rest of your information. Copies in backups, and any recovery copies of deleted files that our storage keeps for a short time, are deleted in turn as described under How long we keep it, and before we use a restored backup we re-apply the deletions made since it was taken, and any choices you withdrew in that time.

We won't charge you or treat you differently for asking.

We don't sell personal information or share it for cross-context behavioural advertising, so there is nothing to opt out of. We don't disclose personal information to third parties for their direct marketing.

This website is for adults. It is not directed to children under 13, and we don't knowingly collect information from them. If you think a child has sent us information, please contact us so that we can remove it.

If we change this notice, we'll post the new version on this page with a new date and version.

Before we use information we already hold in a materially different way from what this notice describes, we'll tell the people it affects, using the contact details they gave us, and ask for their agreement where the law requires it. We never use information collected under an earlier notice in a way that notice ruled out.

KW Lighting, 425 Harbor Blvd, Suite C, Belmont, CA 94002. Email info@kwlighting.com or call (650) 592-2780. Our hours are on our Contact page.

See also our Terms and our Accessibility statement.