How Do You Light Small Spaces?

One of the questions that I am frequently asked is "how do you handle lighting in small spaces?" Well, I would love to give you a simple answer, but each is as unique as each person. There are a lot of questions to ASK before we can ANSWER. For instance, what is the function of the space? Will you need to read in there? How about relax? Will you need to do different things at different times? Will you have plants in the room? Office space? Will this be a make up room? Well, you get the idea.

For the best answer, go to a Lighting Specialist at your local lighting showroom. They will be able to properly assess your needs. For a general answer, let me offer these suggestions for you:

Powder Room - In this room, you can generally go with lights beside or over your vanity and/or an overhead light. If you plan to apply make-up regularly, the side lighting will reduce the shadows.

Full Bathroom - This room will need more light. Aside from the side lighting at the vanity mirror, you will want to have light for your shower/bath area. If it is in a stand-alone shower, be sure it is rated for this area due to the moisture. Additionally, a commode that is separated into its own little room will need lighting, preferably overhead, with the possible addition of decorative wall sconces.

Reading Nook - This area will need brighter bulbs with higher wattages. Aside from your normal overhead lighting, you will want some bright lighting that will illuminate on your reading area. Wall sconces can do this, or torchiere/floor lamps.

Adding lighting throughout a smaller home or apartment can make an otherwise cramped location seem more open and cheery. Wall sconces, recessed lighting, and other accent lighting is perfect for this as they do not take up valuable floor space. Ever go into a model home and notice how bright and large it seems compared to others? The trick that many realtors use is to keep all of the lights on even during the day!

So what are YOUR questions about lighting? Drop us a line/comment and we will be happy to provide an answer!

Until next time, this is LightingGal from Lighting One, reminding you to ask the Lighting Experts at a Lighting One showroom or other specialty retailer to get the most out of your home. Think it is more expensive? Think again! Check us out to see. http://www.lighting-one.com/ to find your closest retailer.

Upcoming Home Lighting Trends Seen at Market

In order to stay “in the know” and ahead of the trends, Lighting One attends Lighting Markets to see what is new in the upcoming marketplace. While visiting numerous showrooms at the recent International Lighting Market in Dallas, Texas, it was apparent that there were a few reoccurring trends. In order to help keep YOU in the know as well, we thought we would share a few of our findings.

The focus appeared to be on lighter colors and softer metals. Polished Nickel also stood out among the sea of fixtures. The incorporation of shades in both fabric and metal was observes in a majority of showrooms. Fixtures accented with crystal, along with colored and clear beads were very popular.

Spheres and globes, and more non-traditional shapes were also apparent.

LED Lighting continues to be the hot topic and many suppliers presented limited introductions due to the rapidly changing technology, although suppliers like Satco, one of Lighting One’s preferred partners, introduced a very large assortment of LED bulbs.

Basic entry level price points in both the traditional and contemporary categories were evident to help consumers find better values without being driven to Home Centers for their lighting needs.

Promotional products such as Tiffany lamps at Quoizel, another Lighting One preferred partner, were also featured.

So, to stay ahead of the trends and be in the know, be sure your lighting needs are fulfilled with lighting experts at any of our family-owned lighting showrooms throughout the country. To find the nearest location to you, visit www.lighting-one.com.

The image shown is Lighting One’s #30312-PW two light sconce with crystal drops, as an example of the crystal beading and metallic finishes that are very popular.

Spruce up Your Home for the Holidays!

You have your family coming in for the holidays and you would LOVE to redo your entire home before-hand... but who can afford it these days? Well, there are a few things that you can do to give your home a whole new look without having to take a second mortgage!

Placing a few new lamps around the house can provide a fresh look for your home, while providing much needed lighting for reading, homework, or projects. This additional splash of light will also brighten your home and make it feel more inviting. OR use these new lamps and turn off the overhead lights for an intimate ambiance.

Strategically placed under-cabinet lighting in your kitchen will not only provide better lighting for your workspace, but also provide your kitchen with an updated look, accent your beautiful counters, and add another layer of invitation to your already welcoming kitchen.

While we are in the kitchen, let's take a look at the lighting over your island. Placing a few art-glass mini-pendants over your island will give your entire kitchen a lift and a modern look. Or install an island light for a dual purpose fixture, that will also allow you to showcase your cookware and keep it in a handy place.

Replacing your dining room chandelier can instantly dress up your dining room. Find one that complements your style, whether traditional, modern, casual, elegant, or even eclectic. Add a few sconces on the wall to complement the chandelier, add another layer of lighting, and provide further decoration for the room.

Let's not forget the bathrooms! Sconces to either side of your vanity mirror will not only provide a high-end look for your bathroom, but your make up will thank you as you will see a more natural look with no harsh shadows. Adding a crystal mini-chandelier in your bathroom is a trendy new way to create an elegant up-lift or to enhance your shabby chic feeling.

While you are redecorating, add a few lamps in your bedrooms - reading lamps for homework spaces, torchieres for seating areas, swing arm lamps above the bed for reading, or table lamps for the side tables.

Think ceiling fans are only for the summer? Not so! Ceiling fans can be used all year around. Simply reverse the airflow and your ceiling fan will circulate the heat throughout the room and keep your room from feeling too stuffy. Not only will it help your energy savings (by better distributing the air) but also, if you buy one this time of year, chances are pretty good you can find them on sale!

So, don't spend a fortune redecorating your home. Pick a few of these tips (or even all of them) and you will find yourself with a drastic change in your home for much less than remodeling!

For more design tips, contact your local lighting design specialist. To find a showroom near you, visit www.lighting-one.com.

The product shown in the picture is 0411-RD and is available at participating Lighting One showrooms.

Ambient Lighting for Your Home Decor

Ambient lighting is a term used to describe the total amount of light that is present in a space. We can say that a room has high or low levels of ambient lighting.

How much lighting is needed or desired is often a very personal preference. In places such as kitchens and bathrooms, it is often good practice to provide multiple types of lighting that can provide high levels of ambient lighting for some tasks, and low levels of ambient lighting for other activities.

Places such as laundry rooms and closets are best illuminated with high levels of ambient lighting, although they also should be provided with dimming controls that allow the high ambient level to be reduced when desired. In spaces such as family rooms and bedrooms it is best to provide ambient lighting primarily from portable lamps and wall mounted lighting such as wall sconces.

Ambient lighting can also be provided by placing surface mounted fixtures at the ceiling. A recent trend is the use of decorative chandeliers in almost any space in the home. A chandelier is highly useful for providing high ambient lighting when necessary, or it can be dimmed to provide a very soft and low level of ambient lighting.

The pendants shown in the photo are from the Effervescent collection. For more information, please visit www.lighting-one.com to locate a Lighting One showroom near you. Showrooms are independently owned and operated, so product may vary from location to location.

Fixing up your home during a recession

In today’s economy and housing market, many people are choosing not to sell their home, but to fix up their existing home instead. This way they can enjoy the property they currently own and when the market rebounds, the time and effort they put in will make their homes more saleable.

One of the largest mistakes a homeowner can make is to not hire a professional to aid in their renovation project, whether it is landscaping, interior design, or remodeling. One can usually see the difference in the finished project when a professional is designing the job.

Starting with outdoor space, a landscape professional can enhance the first impression of your home. In many instances it could be moving old overgrown plantings from the front to the rear yard, or adding to your existing plantings to give a welcome look to your property. In the rear yard, cleaning up and adding new plantings can make the home look younger and more saleable. Adding landscape lighting will both enhance the value to the property, as well as increase the “living space” of the home, as homeowners will enjoy their backyards more often.

Fixing up the interior should be guided by a certified interior designer. Working with color, texture, and light, a designer can give a home a more “comfortable” feeling, and can make spaces appear to be larger. They will work with you to create a home that reflects your personal taste. Their expertise knowledge, expertise, and guidance can help prevent costly mistakes, and can also eliminate features that would be a negative to future prospective buyers.
One aspect of interior design that is rarely discussed is that of interior lighting. If lighting is important to you, be sure to work with a Certified Lighting Designer with lots of lighting experience. It takes years of experience to understand how to use both direct and indirect lighting. Ask about color temperature. Light temperature refers to the color quality that different bulbs produce. Light fixtures and the quality of light they produce have a direct and dramatic impact on the rest of the room. The lighting of items in a room is important, and lighting can make or break a design. Not all light bulbs create light tones and colors equally. This can affect how your furniture and other things look when they are lit at night. A Certified Lighting Designer should be involved with all of your lighting within your project.

Many homeowners, when renovating a bathroom or kitchen, leave it up to their contractor help design their living space and lighting. One should let them make suggestions based on the available space, bur the final plans and layout should be done by a certified specialist.
As a certified lighting designer, I have seen hundreds of floor plans laid out by Architects, interior designers, and kitchen and bath showrooms that have fixture placement that would have shadows, and using builder’s fixtures that waste energy.

One of the additional benefits of upgrading and remodeling now is that you get to enjoy the beauty of your “new home” and will not be rushed to sell until the housing market recovers.

Written by Philip Finkelstein.
Philip is a Lighting One certified lighting designer,
and owner of Illuminations in Rockville Centre, NY
for the past 30 years.

Lighting One showrooms are locally owned and operated and in-store merchandise may vary by location. Product shown is 3653-OPF. For online purchases or to find your nearest Lighting One showroom, go to http://www.lighting-one.com/.

Task Lighting for Your Home Design

Task lighting is the lighting necessary to carry out specific activities in the home. Generally, task lighting is higher in intensity than other types of lighting. There are four primary tasks that require higher than average lighting levels.

1. Lighting for food preparation and cooking

2. Lighting for grooming (shaving, putting on makeup, etc.)

3. Lighting for reading

4. Lighting for a variety of activities in a laundry room.

Footcandles are the unit that we use to measure the amount of lighting reaching a task. A footcandle is a simple concept, and one footcandle is the amount of light reaching a surface that is one foot away from one candle when no other light is present.

The level of footcandles necessary to achieve good task lighting is approximately 50, and can be achieved in a variety of ways. Your lighting consultant can help you to better understand this concept and can help you to achieve this level of lighting.

No matter what your lighting needs are, a Lighting One showroom should be able to assist you and provide your more Lighting Design Tips. Visit www.lighting-one.com for your nearest showroom. Products vary by showroom location.

Lighting for Your Bathroom and Vanity

Bath and vanity lights provide task and general lighting. Vanity lighting comes in a variety of styles and offer different numbers of lighting units. These fixtures usually use incandescent bulbs to provide task lighting for applying makeup, shaving, and grooming, but they also provide good general lighting for the entire room.

Note: To reduce shadows, the best lighting for your bathroom mirror is a combination of light both above and on either side of the mirror. The second choice would be to have lighting only on each side of the mirror (as shown here). The third option, but still a good option, is to have lighting only above the mirror.

The product shown is 1061-AP, available at Lighting One showrooms. To locate the showroom nearest you, please visit www.lighting-one.com. For more Lighting One design tips, please be certain to subscribe to the blog.

Let Your Lighting Bathe Your Bathroom

The key lighting issue in the bath area is at the mirror to provide shadow-free lighting on the face. One fixture mounted over the mirror is a good way of lighting the bathroom, but this can still cause shadows on the face. The best way to eliminate these shadows is to add wall fixtures to the side of the mirror.

If the fixture uses exposed lamps, do not use wattage higher than 40 watts. For fixtures with a clear or well-diffused glass globe use no more than 60 watts. Etched or white glass on a fixture should be used with no more than 100 watts. Color corrected fluorescent lamps should be used when fluorescent fixtures are desired.

Areas over 100 square feet require several recessed down lights or decorative surface mounted fixtures. Adding companion – close to ceiling mounted fixtures will help to supplement bath wall fixtures in these larger bathrooms.

In the shower, the use of a recessed shower light or a ceiling mounted plastic unit is appropriate. And don't forget the area over the commode. Here a recessed unit is always a welcome addition.
Finally, remember that a Ground Fault Circuit Interrupter (GFCI) should be used to protect the homeowner with any lighting fixture within the reach of water. Multiple light sources and multiple controls will allow you to alternate between morning efficiency and nighttime serenity.

No matter what your lighting needs are for your Master Bath, a Lighting One showroom should be able to assist you and provide your more Lighting Design Tips. Visit www.lighting-one.com for your nearest showroom.

Bathroom Lighting Solutions for your Home (Part IV of series)

Lighting for the water closet
In smaller bathrooms, the vanity lighting is often sufficient for general lighting in the water closet area. However, if the water closet is far from the vanity or is placed in a separate compartment, it is necessary to provide a separate light source for that area. It is useful to provide a decorative ceiling mounted fixture for this purpose, or a recessed fixture placed close to the water closet.

Decorative fixtures are being used more and more for bathroom applications. In the water closet area it is also appropriate and useful to use wall-mounted decorative fixtures that provide excellent task lighting.

General ambient lighting

Placing a decorative lighting fixture in the center of the bathroom is an excellent lighting solution for any bathroom. The decorative options available for this type of fixtures are endless, and it has become very common and appropriate to use highly decorative fixtures in bathrooms. There are many options available, including surface-mounted fixtures, close-to-ceiling, and hanging chandeliers. When these fixtures are also controlled by a dimmer, they add a tremendously high sense of elegance and comfort to the bathroom.

See a Lighting One sales consultant for more information and design ideas.

Posted with permission from http://www.lighting-one.com/

Bathroom Lighting Solutions for your Home (Part III of series)

Fixtures above the mirror
If placing fixtures on the side of the mirror is not possible or practical, there are many fixture options that can be placed above the mirror. Typically, this placement is more common and often easier than placing the lighting on the sides of the mirror. The key to create a successful lighting solution is to choose a fixture that is appropriately sized to the size of the mirror.
A general rule of thumb is to provide 100 watts of incandescent lighting for every 18" of horizontal width of the mirror. Placing fixtures above the mirror is equal in quality to fixtures placed on the side as long as the fixtures provide an adequate intensity of light.

Dimming
Using a dimmer on the vanity fixtures is extremely important and can add tremendous comfort to this area of the bath. Most of the time the amount of lighting provided by a vanity fixture is excellent for the grooming tasks, but it is excessive for the general use of the bathroom. Providing a dimming capability allows the fixture’s light intensity to be modulated for the other tasks that occur in the bathroom. It cannot be overstated how important this option can be for adding comfort to the bath.

Lighting for the shower and tub
For the other tasks in the bathroom, it is important to provide another series of lighting layers. In the shower or the tub, it is important to place lighting directly above these areas. In order to meet the standards of the National Electrical Code, these fixtures must be labeled as meeting the requirements for wet conditions. This are typically called “wet label” fixtures. There are many varieties of fixtures that meet these requirements, and they can be either recessed or surface mounted.

The recessed fixtures are more common for this application, and they are available in new designs that use halogen bulbs in the MR16 shapes and MR shapes. These halogen sources provide excellent lighting quality that far exceeds the typical shower fixtures that use standard household “A” or general service lamps.

Posted with permission from http://www.lighting-one.com/

Bathroom Lighting Solutions for your Home - Part II of Series (Incandescent vs Fluorescent Fixtures)

Incandescent Fixtures

Incandescent wall fixtures for the vanity area are available today in an extraordinary range of styles. The older incandescent vanity strips that used exposed globe light bulbs remain available, but are not generally the best solution for purposes of an appropriate design solution. Interestingly, these vanity strips do provide an excellent quality of light and that is why they are often used in dressing rooms in theaters and movie sets.

Whatever the style, it is extremely important to find fixtures where the light bulbs are shielded by a shade and therefore not visible. However, it is also important to find fixtures with shades that have enough diffused quality so that the light effectively exits from the fixture without creating glare.

Fluorescent fixtures

Fluorescent vanity fixtures also are available for placement either on the sides or the top of the mirror. Although not as many design options are available using fluorescent bulbs, there are more options than you might expect. One of the benefits of using fluorescent fixtures is that fluorescent lighting today is extremely efficient and therefore provides excellent light with very little heat exposure.

Fluorescent bulbs in today’s market are available in a range of options that are classified by their “color temperature” and their “color rendering” ability. Older bulbs were called by terms such as “cool white” and “warm white” but these terms are not used today. The color temperature scale defines the relative visual “warmth” or “ visual “coolness” of a fluorescent lamp. The higher the number, the more cool that the bulb appears, and the lower the color temperature, the warmer that the bulb appears.

In the bathroom, it is most appropriate to use bulbs with a color temperature in the range of 3000-3500K. The Kelvin scale is used to define the color of the bulb and how it renders neutral surfaces. Bulbs within the 3000-3500K scale are close in color temperature to incandescent bulbs and will appear very comfortable in the bathroom.

Posted with permission from http://www.lighting-one.com/

Bathroom Lighting Solutions for your Home Decor - Part I of series

Much as with the kitchen, master bathrooms are a central focus of the modern home and should therefore be provided with a variety of lighting options. Focusing on the various tasks that occur in the bath can be a guide to providing appropriate lighting.

Lighting for Grooming

The most important task lighting solution and the first layer for consideration is lighting at the vanity area. The primary task here is grooming, including applying makeup, shaving, etc. The grooming tasks generally require the highest level of lighting in the bath, and this lighting solution is therefore extremely important.

The most ideal solution for grooming is to provide lighting at the sides of the mirror. Placing the lighting at the sides allows the light to wash the face from a horizontal direction and creates no shadows on the face. This type of wall-mounted or mirror-mounted lighting can be use either incandescent or fluorescent sources. Both of these sources can be dimmed, and it is highly recommended that a dimmer be provided for the task lighting for grooming.

Posted with permission from http://www.lighting-one.com/