How to Choose a Light Bulb

Light is a key element in making a space come alive with mood and character. It is so essential to the process of designing a room.  I will often point out, we can't change your colors without changing the lighting.

And it need not be an expensive lighting and rewiring installation. Changing a light bulb and a new shade can be as effective.

With new regulations and codes about light bulbs, we have to stay informed about what is the best type of light for a certain space: a hallway, entrance, kitchens, to each room in a house or workplace,

This past week, NPR aired a very informative broadcast on Light Bulbs: Watts The Deal.

A broadcast full of very good tips and advice on which is the best light bulb for the right space. Such as the difference between warm whites, soft white and daylight. Another tip is how CFL is not suitable outside for porch lights or gardens in colder climates. And another is how LED's work best with a dimmer.

Great information on the technical and energy aspects of bulbs. But discussions on how LED is closer to the color of incandescent with more red in the spectrum. And CFL, the compact fluorescent can be a cold and shadowless light and that is what puts us off that bulb. However, an even shadowless light is best to work under particularly if you are using any machinery or tools or working at a desk. With a good diffuser, it is a very efficient light.

On the designer side, you should really question what activities happen in your space you need to light. Is it kitchen, bathroom, bedroom, a living room or a room of many activities in the space. Most often we have multiple things going on in one room.

Listen to the broadcast if you have any questions on which light bulb to use. Really useful information. Watts the Deal.

Dressing Room Lighting

How often do you go into a dressing room and try on a gorgeous dress to find it looks horrible.  How often do you avoid it, just bring the garment home and try it on in your own space knowing the lighting is better.

This past week while working on the space and light for a dressing room, there are a few tips that are essential for good light in the room where you hang and store your clothes and dress yourself.

Remember it is a private space, usually just for you and/or your partner, but it is the space where you need good lighting that is flattering, but also light enough to see the difference between your brown, navy and black socks or tights.

This is where white and diffused light really are best, white so you can see color clearly and diffused, the flattering light, so there are no hard shadows. The examples above have white shades around the pendants. Easy to find your black socks and renders color well

Designing dressing rooms are essential for retail spaces as well, it is in the dressing room where we decide to purchase and a good tip from the high end retail dressing rooms is to place long strips of LED or T5 triphosphor fluorescent behind your mirrors so the light reflects off the walls.

If your your dressing room is more the size of a closet and not one that you walk into, putting a small white glass pendant in the area where you do dress, you will see the colors in better light.

Examples of good lighting for dressing rooms and closets and all from  John Lewis, under £100. They will give a good quality for any room.

Decode

One of the most interesting exhibits I saw this week was the retrospective of Decode, a collaboration of London based product designers who have challenged conventions. Their innovative use of materials and form... who would consider concrete for a lampshade or bending fluorescent tubes into a curving Celtic shape or using steel as a sinuous ribbon.

I attended the exhibit of their retrospective in a equally fascinating venue, a 19th century brick building in Shoreditch where I met with the designers and they showed me their designs.

The expanse of the space allowed the lighting to be shown particularly well, being able to exhibit the lighting grouped together.

Cast concrete pendant shades

Plumen lamps with glass shades

The slice box, a table that fits together like a Tangram puzzle, constructed of wood with 40 coats of lacquer.

Bell, a concertina side table and coffee table.

Ribbon, a continuous band of steel made into a coat rack of differing heights and a place for your umbrella.

Vessel series 01-03, this hand blown glass is made tin varying thicknesses to reflect the curves and form of the Plumen lamp, the best way to see this marvelous light. I must add I had several talks this week with other lighting designers and we had all said what a good design the Plumen lamp is, how well it looks when hung in multiples and indeed how well it looks in this glass vessel, a beautiful light.

Don Draper's Apartment

Don Draper's new apartment on 73rd and Park is a dream, a Mid-Century modernist's dream, it has so many of the features we now love of a 60's living room.

The grass cloth wall paper, sunken living room, the white carpet the pendant swagged over the fireplace and the fireplace, I think I like that the most.

In the past few years I have had some projects where the clients want to change their 60's style living rooms. One had a whole wall with rosewood paneling, a fireplace off center with a travertine hearth and surround. The built- in shelves, in rosewood as well, added the balance to the tv, fireplace arrangement.  I advised against alterations, change the upholstery or carpet, but that elevation is now a "period style"

Back to Mad Men, the last episode had Betty survey the living room and take in all the modernity, it was an interesting scene considering she lives in a Gothic mansion.

I followed up on the decoration of this set, it was done by set designer Claudette Didul. She spent some time on research, getting inspiration from two books by 1960s bestselling interior design author Betty Pepis and "Decoration U.S.A.," a 1965 collaboration between Jose Wilson and Arthur Leaman.

I also learned she found furniture on Etsy and  Craigslist to create the right feel for the ad man's new apartment with his new wife.

The large recessed lighting, the colorful cabinets, Danish modern dining set and the window treatments, all stylish and so appropriate for the time.

A Clean, Well Lighted Place

Hemingway wrote a story called A Clean, Well Lighted Place, it is quite a sad story about 3 men of three different ages, one young, one middle aged and one elderly. The story takes place in a cafe, the clean well lighted space and revolves around the 3 men, the waiter, the bartender, the customer. The waiter is young and impatient, the bartender is middle aged, he is tired from insomnia, the customer is an elderly man, deaf, quiet, lonely. It is the clean cafe the customer comes to drink his brandy and stays till late.

I read this story a while ago and have revisited many times. It is brief and the story is told much through dialogue. You have to listen to it almost, the customer says nothing it is only the dialogue between the waiter and bartender. The young waiter is eager to go home to his wife in bed. The tolerant bartender sees the old customer needs to come and sit in the clean cafe under “the shadow the leaves of the tree made against the electric light.”

There are many aspects of this story that draw me back to it, the poignancy, the ages of man, the craft of the writing, but one is the title, A Clean, Well Lighted Place. I am always puzzled by the word lighted, I would normally say a clean well lit place. Is that correct grammar?  is a place well lit or lighted? the word is used as past tense of a verb by adding “ed” or is it present perfect? past perfect?  must look up...

The other aspect of this poignant story is again in the title and the setting for the story, the clean and well lit cafe, which makes me re-read this story. There is no description of the cafe, only that it is clean, the bar is polished, it is night and electric light is on. Through the dialogue the bartender knows it is the cleanness and light that brings the old man back night after night. It is the  place, the surroundings, the trees, the patterns the light makes, the cleanness and the order.

This past weekend I was at a talk with other designers for London Design Week, on Sunday morning we gathered together with coffee and champagne and had a discussion about how designers need to be philosophers and psychologists which again brought me back to this story, I believe that behind this story is aesthetics, the cleanness of the cafe, the well ordered place, the pattern of leaves from the light all bring solace to the old man. In an interview I had last week the young man asked me a question “why is it important to get the inside/ outside of your home right?” I nearly said that is a philosophical question, but replied with “ good design is satisfying, it pleases us to be in a beautiful space....it increases the flow and harmony in life”  all the stuff you read in magazines. I wanted to say there is this story you should read that really tells how interior design is really important and it makes us feel better and is good for business, but I didn’t tell him that, instead when he asked me what is my style, I said I like a clean well lighted place.