The invention relates to automatically verifying the possibility of rendering a lighting atmosphere from an abstract description, for example from a lighting atmosphere specified in XML (Extensible Markup Language) independent of a specific lighting infrastructure and of a room layout. A basic idea of the invention is to translate the possibilities of a lighting infrastructure into so called light element templates. A light element template contains an indication of the possibilities of the lighting infrastructure at a certain semantic location, for example in a shop or a home in which the lighting infrastructure is provided. For every type of light effect of a lighting infrastructure, a different light element template may be created. This allows to automatically verify the possibility of rendering a lighting atmosphere from an abstract description in a lighting infrastructure at an early stage of the lighting atmosphere design process.