Looks Are Something

The cheapest porcelain fixtures with 100-watt bulbs might provide safe lighting, but they won’t be much to look at. Visualize the appearance of the fixture and the lamp as well as their function. Some fixtures literally are works of art (Tiffany lamps, for example); others are designer-created and are very striking to look at. Do you want to look at a brass hanging light over the kitchen table or cobalt-blue steel? You’re going to be looking at them every day, so take your time choosing your fixtures.

Combining Lighting Styles

Most general living space will accommodate more than one lighting style. A closet
obviously doesn’t need accent lighting unless you make a point of giving your guests
a tour of your shoe collection. A dining room needs ambient light, but it can become
very dramatic with, say, floor-to-ceiling lights illuminating the side walls while the recessed
ceiling lights are off and a few lit candles are on the table. A mix of lighting
offers the most options and can present a room and its occupants at their best in a
variety of settings.

Whether you’re building something new or remodeling, keep your furniture in mind
rather than strictly installing lights by formula (so many per square feet at such and
such a distance from each other). You might have a grand piano ready to nestle in a
corner of the living room or a windowless wall just waiting for your collection of
family portraits. Either situation calls for very specific fixture placement.

Lighting Up Outside

I think exterior lighting is always a plus with any. Good lighting will welcome you and your guests on a rainy night, provide some measure of security for your family, and illuminate address numbers, door locks, and staircases. Before you decide to install fixtures as powerful as Batman’s searchlight, consider the following:

• Know the size of the fixture and its scale compared to your house.
• Think about the location and aim of the lights and their effect on your neighbors. (A little light goes a long way at night.)Caulk the top seam between the fixture and the section of the house where it’s attached to ensure that water stays out. Leave the bottom uncaulked so that, if moisture does get in, it has a place to exit.
• Think twice before installing solid-brass fixtures. They won’t rust, but eventually most will tarnish and need polishing.

Installing outside lighting, like many tasks, can be done the easy way or the hard way. The easy way means mounting all the fixtures on the walls of your house (and porch ceilings), which means you can pull your wires from inside the house. The hard way means digging ditches and running wires and conduit underground, although this will give your yard a much more dramatic presentation. As a final consideration, think about what your outdoor lighting will look like from inside the house. You can enjoy your yard even in the winter if you set up lighting that accents it well.

Aim the Lighting High, Low, and Wide

Light from a lamp is aimed somewhere, whether it’s the top of your desk or your workbench. Even general ambient lighting gets directed somewhere. Recessed ceiling lights and adjustable spotlights can provide as broad or as focused a beam of light as you desire. Some lights are installed as wall washers, meaning they shine down a wall either to highlight artwork or other collections or simply to draw your attention to the perimeter of the room, conveying a greater sense of size than might truly exist. The advantages of recessed ceiling lights are their versatility and unobtrusiveness. Let’s face it, a chandelier automatically draws attention to itself—especially if one of your party guests is swinging on it. A recessed fixture is far more subtle and almost hides in the background.
Some fixtures can serve more than one purpose. A wall sconce, for example, can serve general, task, and accent lighting needs. This versatility is a huge advantage over ceiling lights when you’re remodeling because it’s far easier to wire and install a wall fixture than to install most ceiling fixtures.

Know Your Lighting

Lighting is defined by its use in our homes and places of work. Designers and architects break it down into several categories:

➤ Accent lighting emphasizes or highlights a specific area or object and directs our attention to it.
➤ Ambient lighting is general illumination.
➤ Task lighting is for illuminating work and tasks.

It’s never a bad idea to install plenty of ambient lighting, even if you later decide it’s more than you immediately need. At some point in the future, you might move things around and decide you need more lighting. I wouldn’t recommend tearing up the walls just to install fixtures, but if you have an open ceiling or already are doing some installations, consider a few extra light fixtures if the circuit permits. If you walk into a lighting store or the lighting section of a home-improvement center, you’ll see dozens and dozens of fixtures to choose from. Where do you start?

Distinguishing a Lumen from Illuminance

Light output is measured in lumens. According to The American Heritage Dictionary of Science, a lumen is a unit of luminous flux equal to the amount of light from a source of one candela radiating equally in all directions. A candela is a unit of luminous intensity equal to 1/60 of the radiating power of one square centimeter of a black body at 1,772°C. You can draw two conclusions from this information:

• The higher the lumen measurement, the more light you’ll have to work with from a fixture.
• Authors can easily get carried away when they have too many reference books at their disposal.

Illuminance, which is measured in foot-candles, is the amount of light hitting a point on a surface. A foot-candle is (easily enough) defined as the amount of light produced by one candle on a surface one foot away. We can’t see illuminance, but we do see luminance or brightness, although this is somewhat subjective. (What appears to be dim light to me might be plenty bright to you.) Architects and lighting consultants take all these measurements into consideration when they calculate the lighting needs of buildings.
Comfortable lighting selections and light levels are determined by the tasks that require the lighting, the distance between the light and the task, and the degree of glare. One definition of glare is excessive contrast between the intensity of light on a particular object or surface and the surrounding area or background; indirect glare is the glare produced from a reflective surface. Too much contrast between them causes glare. (Computer screens are a common example.) You can reduce this glare by …

• Installing fixtures that keep the light level appropriate for the task at hand.
• Using a louver or a lens to block or redirect the light.
• Carefully considering the placement and spacing of light fixtures.

Another measurement of lighting quality is how well it enables you to see colors accurately. The better the color rendering, the more pleasing the living space. Color-rendering capability is based, naturally enough, on the color-rendering index (CRI), which measures from 1 to 100. (Natural daylight measures at 100.) The higher the rating on the CRI, the more lifelike and accurate the object being viewed.

Measuring Your Lighting Needs

The NEC calls for a minimum calculation for general lighting and receptacle loads of three watts per square foot of living space. This comes out to approximately one circuit every 575 square feet. That doesn’t amount to a lot, but remember, electrical codes only establish minimum standards. In reality, you’ll want lighting everywhere.
Consider the different areas of your house and their individual needs:

• Kitchen. Overhead lighting, natural light from windows and sliding doors, work light over counters, a light over the stove.
• Bathrooms. Primarily lights over the sink(s) and lights over the bathtub and toilet, depending on the size of the room.
• Dining room. A hanging light over the table, recessed ceiling lights, or possibly wall sconces. This room often has a dimmer switch to tone down the light.
• Bedrooms. Children’s rooms often get ceiling lights. Master bedrooms might depend more on reading lamps and switch-controlled receptacles, although large rooms can use recessed ceiling lighting as well.
• Hallway. You might want a long track light to highlight artwork on the walls.
• Garage. At least one light per bay over the hood of the cars. It’s even better to add one or two at the other end so the trunks are illuminated.
• Basement. Depends on whether the space is finished or unfinished. In either case, you want at least enough ceiling light to cover the entire area thoroughly, leaving no dark spots.
• Closets, storage rooms. At least one ceiling light.
• Outdoors. At a minimum, one light over each entry door and over the garage doors. It’s even better to consider lights to line walkways and illuminate gardens or security lighting for back and side yards.

Your use of a room obviously will determine your choice of lighting fixtures, their locations, and their number. A single fluorescent ceiling light will fulfill all the working requirements of most closets because the requirements are pretty basic: to shed enough light for you to identify and choose your clothes. A kitchen, on the other hand, requires all kinds of light for a modern homeowner. You need lights over counters for close work so you can chop, dice, and mince vegetables instead of your fingers. Overhead lights enable you to read the newspaper and get a better look at what’s hiding in the back of your pantry. A dimmer-controlled hanging light over the eating area lets you tone things down for a late-night meal. Anywhere you’ve got a wall, ceiling, or floor, you can install a light. It’s simply a matter of extending a circuit or running a new one and choosing your fixtures. The science of lighting is a little more complicated.

How Illuminating my home is.......

We are way beyond the point when lighting was simply functional, allowing us to work and not stumble around after the sun went down. If function was all it meant to us, every room in our house would have one huge, efficient, fluorescent light fixture on the ceiling and maybe a night-light or two for after dark. Instead, lighting does much more such as …

• Create a mood or atmosphere.
• Define a space.
• Provide security and safety.
• Highlight artwork or a section of your home.

Your lighting needs will be defined by these factors and others. Before you install a particular type of lighting, ask yourself the following questions:

• Who will be using this area and for what purpose?
• Do I want a traditional or modern look?
• How often will anyone be in this room?
• How much am I willing to spend?
• Is energy conservation important to me?

At a minimum, the code calls for one switch-controlled light per habitable room. Hallways, stairways, and garages also must meet this code requirement. This can be accomplished with permanent fixtures, such as ceiling lights, or through a switch-controlled receptacle into which a lamp can be plugged. Bathrooms and kitchens, however, must have an installed fixture. Your first step is to establish your minimum lighting needs and then choose the style of fixture you want to meet them.