Saving Green

When designing a room, one of the aspects that modern living affords is all kinds of lighting options.  The possibilities for lighting design are so numerous that some people have made a career of studying them and offering their expertise as lighting designers. 

For a DIYer like myself, endless options can sometimes be a point of consternation.  Which lighting option should I choose?  How will I know if it's going to fit my needs?  Is my design going to stand the test of time, or is it going to look cheesy in five years?

The answer to the last question can often provide the answer to the prior ones.  There's something to be said for lighting designs that have stood the test of time.  The conventional is often the most practical. 

When you walk into a dark room, do you want to choose from a bank of switches and dials before taking the next step? When you turn on the lights in a room, do you want a lighting experience or do you want to be able to see what you're doing?

By now you should have guessed that I didn't get too creative with the lighting design of my renovation project.  I wired the house myself with the help of an electrician friend.  The only thing getting in the way of us creating a temple of light was time and money, the two things that often get in the way of temple building.

What I did do, however, was follow the local code and then I expanded on its requirements where I felt it was necessary and where cost allowed.

In the master bedroom, I thought it would be nice to have two overhead lighting options.  I knew I was going to make use of a ceiling fan that I already owned which included lights.  The fan and its lights would be at the center of the room.  To provided another lighting option, I installed 6 recessed light fixtures around the perimeter of the room.  The 6 recessed lights are controlled by a single dimmer switch.

If you just want light to see what you're doing, the center lights are fine.  If you want a more controlled lighting effect, the dimmer on the perimeter lights provides that.  Of course there are bedside lamps as well, though they are not hard-wired.

I'm on the lighting tip because this evening I got busy replacing the 6 incandescent bulbs in the recessed lights with dim-able compact florescent bulbs.  This was not an easy task.  First of all, the ceiling is high enough that I needed a ladder to do the work.  Second, each of the recessed light fixtures had to be adjusted because the new bulbs are longer than the old ones and I didn't want them sticking out below the ceiling.

Adjusting the fixtures meant removing the fixture trim and loosening a wing nut that holds the socket to the canister.  Once loosened, the socket can slide up and down.  It sounds straight-forward enough, but the springs that hold the trim in place are tricky to get in and out, and the sliding light socket contraption is finicky.  After dealing with six of them I had enough of handymanness for one night.

The dim-able compact florescent bulbs from Greenlite work pretty well, though one of the six malfunctioned and will have to be returned.  They also emit a slight buzz when they're dimmed low.  I'm reserving final judgement until after we've used them for a while.

Almost all our light fixtures now have compact florescent bulbs.  This is just another way we're saving green by living green.