The stars of stage and screen spend a good deal of time in their dressing rooms in front of the mirror, checking to make sure they are ready for the literal spotlight. You may not be going onstage, but that is no excuse for poor lighting at your vanity. Leave the film noir to the […]
Category: Bedrooms & Bathrooms
1THING: Plug In Kids’ Bedrooms

A few weeks ago I had fun detailing what happens in children’s bedrooms and why typical lighting falls short of serving human needs. This week I take another crack at the kids’ rooms, this time for my 1THING: Plug In solutions series. Honestly, it is a little tougher to light a child’s bedroom with plug […]
1THING: New Build Bedrooms for Children

My children are at the age where calling them kids becomes increasingly dubious. Sixteen and twenty-one years of age, they spend more time away from home every year. That doesn’t mean that stepping on LEGOs is a past hazard- the threat is still very real. (And yes, I know that the correct term is LEGO, […]
1THING: Plug In Bedroom Lighting

When it comes to plug-in lighting upgrades in the bedroom, the bedside table lamp is a runaway favorite. Both useful and ubiquitous, this staple of decorative lighting needs no introduction. And devoting an entire blog post to them might be considered a waste of time. That means I will probably write about bedside lamps someday, […]
1THING: New Build Bedrooms

I am having fun with both 1THING series, and this week’s post on bedrooms is no exception. I am pretty good at overcomplicating things, so the mental gymnastics of forcing myself to make a single choice is proving to be good exercise. Plus, I think I might quit my job so I can just sketch and doodle […]
1THING: Plug In Bathroom Lighting

It is particularly difficult to change lighting in a bathroom without hiring an electrician. Most baths are filled with tubs, showers, toilets, and vanities that leave little to no room for tables and lamps. And plug-in lamps near a tub are a bad idea from a safety perspective – electricity near water is a time-honored […]
Exposure: A Better Bath

In the fourth and final SMART LIGHTING SERIES video from Wipliance, Lee and I take a quick bathroom break to explore the Light Can Help You approach to lighting. We push back against common trends like downlights over the sink and vanity lights over the mirror to deliver a better experience. We also use a […]
1THING: New Build Baths

In retrospect, perhaps I should have saved this post for Halloween. Why? Because I attempted to illustrate light on the human face and ended up creating ghosts. I was never very good at drawing faces, well, honestly, I was never ANY good at drawing faces. But since faces are the reason we have mirrors over […]
Bedrooms: Beyond Sleeping

We have a certain number of formulas for illuminating a bedroom. We layer in lighting to deliver our five promises of light in these rooms just as we would anywhere else in the home. The solutions are different in a bedroom than in a kitchen because the function and form of each space is vastly […]
Sorry, Mom.

My mother has carefully and meticulously curated a style for the family farmhouse over the past 45 years of residency (we’ve had the farm since about 1882, but none of us remember that). In the 1970’s and 80’s when I was growing up it was, well, very 1970’s. Then, when we finally all went off […]