January, 2010 

The house is now peppered with vivid blue electric boxes strung together with bright yellow and white wire. It’s like flashy undies, a little wilder than you want to show in public, fun to see but soon to be hidden by a tasteful covering of sheetrock and plaster.

I created a lighting plan with help from “Residential Lighting” by Randall Whitehead, respected dean of lighting design. But it featured twice as many luminaires (aka “lamps” or “lights” to the uninitiated like me) as I could afford. Even scaled back, the plan still features a lot of fixtures, and it adds up to be painfully expensive. But lighting is so important to how a home feels and functions that I just have to go for it.

Lamps it turns out are what we call light bulbs on this side of the pond, or maybe this side of an electrician’s license. And there are a mind-boggling number of choices in terms of color temperature, shape, luminance, beam spread and energy efficiency.

I’m going to use as many standard screw in base fixtures as possible knowing more affordable LEDs are on the way but perhaps not in the more unusual bases.

For now, it’s just great to have even a few bare bulbs and recessed cans up and running. The low light of these winter days make it important for the crew to have enough light to work safely. And it’s a boost to see these changes coming along. Lightens my day!