It is time to retire your light switches and dimmers…if you want to get the full benefits of good light back into your life. Get them back? Yes, you and I lost out on natural light’s benefits when our ancestors decided houses were better than tents and offices were better than fields. They moved indoors, […]
The fifth article in my series exploring the past, present, and future of lighting at home has just been published in Designing Lighting magazine. Too often, point-by-point lighting calculations, sometimes called heat maps, are used to justify a lighting proposal of recessed downlights. This is the same method used for gas station canopies, but homeowners […]
Of all five (or six?) of the promises of light, light that helps us Do Better is the one most of us think we know. It doesn’t take a lighting designer to understand that, if we want to read a magazine, we need a light on it. Does it really matter if it comes from a […]
Recently our team delivered a continuing education webinar on layers of light for residential and hospitality spaces, a session I have led many times. Each time I revisit the material and update the presentation based on what I have learned since the previous outing. While preparing for this latest offering, I made a new mental connection […]
A few years ago I wrote a post on the do’s and don’ts of front porch lighting. So why do it again? Because I never stop learning about light, and that means every few years I might make different recommendations. That is certainly true outdoors as I learn more about the negative effects of light at night (LAN). This […]
Periodically my obsession with Red Velvet cake (or Waldorf Astoria Cake, as it is sometimes known) leaves the safety of my personal life and comes across the border into my work. A few years ago, struggling to explain the value of layers of light in ways that would make it easy remember, I realized that […]
My desire to revisit the do’s and don’ts of lighting is going to kill me, but I am having too much fun to stop. These posts take the longest to create of any I have previously written, but sketching is so relaxing that I look forward to the next one. So here it is, the […]
Blogging for me can be a bit like extended traveling. I pick a destination, plan a route, and usually arrive there more or less when intended. But the longer the trip, the more unpredictable it becomes, peppered with side trips and new discoveries. In other words, I did not plan this post. But sometimes my […]
Light plays a central role in many of the foundational stories of humanity. I am most familiar with the narrative in the Judeo-Christian stories of creation in which the first recorded words of Yahweh are “let there be light.” But light as an element of the divine is not restricted to modern Christianity and metaphors […]
Read More… from Light Can Help Us #4: Let there be light…BANG!
My fourth article for DESIGNING LIGHTING magazine continues my exploration into the the future of lighting control, a future that must look beyond the venerable dimmer and finicky proprietary control systems. Getting the most out of light needs to be simple to install and even easier to use, compatible across platforms and long-lasting. You know, […]
Over the last decade or so, our family has taken a number of camping trips to some of the darkest places in the United States. What was the first lesson we taught our children about nighttime in the campground? Never shine your flashlight in someone else’s face. What is the first thing that greets our […]
Read More… from Light Can Help Us #3: (Not) Too Much of a Good Thing