Imagine yourself in a windowless, featureless room, like an exam room at the hospital. There is a light switch on the wall that turns on the overhead fluorescent fixtures. You can have bright white light or pitch dark at the flick of a switch. And those are your only two choices. So most of the […]
Category: Design Theory
Choosing Color Temperature
Choosing a color temperature can be tricky. Read my quick summary on Houzz.com. How to Choose the Right Color Temperature of LED Lightbulb […]
Light for Feeling
Once you have light for doing and light for knowing, it’s time to think about light for feeling. Can light impact how you feel? Imagine yourself driving a car. Suddenly, you see flashing red and blue lights coming from behind you. Your heartrate rises, your brain goes to high alert, and you reach a state […]
Downlighting Advice from Houzz.com
Are you a Houzz.com user? Check out my article on the pros and cons of downlights by clicking the link below. The Pros and Cons of Recessed Lighting […]
Light for Doing
Do you know how many footcandles you need to read a magazine? Most likely not, and there is no reason you should. But you are an expert at what you do in your home, and you need light to see it. You need a certain kind of light to read your magazine, light that illuminates […]
Theory: Red Velvet Cake
I can talk about lighting theory and ideas for hours (just ask my former students), but all my lighting knowledge can be encapsulated in a single piece of delicious Red Velvet Cake. If you read just one post on this blog, or remember just one idea, I hope this will be the one. Red Velvet […]
The Nature of Light: Starry Night
The Starry Night Theory I’m not a historian, so I have no idea how long humans existed with the sun, moon, and stars as our only sources of light before someone figured out how to keep a flame. I do know that it was a long time, and we got used to living our lives […]
The Nature of Light: The Sunny Day
In the introductory post, we discovered a new way to talk about light. Why am I so confident in this approach to lighting your home? Because it has been tested for thousands of years by billions of people, every time the sun comes out. I call it the Sunny Day Theory, and pair it with […]
The Language of Light
Professional lighting designers have a secret language. We use our coded language to streamline our conversations with other insiders, and like a secret handshake that lets us identify other members of our inner circle. Outside of that circle, the language is utter nonsense. “I would love to find an LED with a 3000K-1600K variable CCT […]