Seeing Things in a New Light

With all of the advancements in and attention to home lighting, it has become one of design's most illuminating topics. We offer the following primer on how you can get the look and feel you want around your house.

STORY BY: CLARE MIERS

CAN-DO LIGHTING: UPDATING THE LOOK IN ANY ROOM
"In the past, we saw houses that were using a lot of surface-mounted fixtures, and while builders were using them to try to keep costs down, these types of fixtures aren't necessarily architecturally appealing," says Mike Bauer, a Mr. Electric franchise owner in Phoenix, Arizona. "With all of the media focusing on home design now, though, people are beginning to see more options in lighting design." One new alternative is recessed cans, which come in a variety of styles. "You can adjust the aperture so that you can put emphasis on various parts of the house. It's all very customized," Bauer explains. "Cans also open up the space and make the room seem larger."

Jim Simmons, a master electrician and Mr. Electric franchise owner in Olympia, Washington, agrees that recessed cans are a very hot item in the market right now. "They're a great solution for new homes," he says. "But they can also update older homes if they're designed and installed properly. Simmons also points out that the new generation of recessed cans is safer than its predecessors. "People used to start fires all the time by putting too large of a lamp in the cans," he says. "Now the cans have a thermal cutout, which is designed to shut down if there's a problem."

Another option is LED light sources. "They're all the rage due to their extremely long life and low wattage," says Doreen Le May Madden, the president of Lux Lighting Design, which has been featured, among other places, on This Old House.

LEDs are special diodes that are commonly used as pilot lights in electronic appliances to indicate whether the circuit is closed or not. "They have a range of 50,000 to 80,000 hours of lamp life. And the technology is growing by leaps and bounds," says Le May Madden. "They 're now able to highlight very small accent areas, such as display cases, using one-watt lamps."

CONVENIENCE AND SAFETY BY DESIGN
Simmons is providing a lot of Lutron's RadioRA to his clients these days. RadioRA is a wireless, customizable electronic system that can be integrated to turn on all of the lights in the house with the touch of a button. "This truly is a life-changing technology," says Simmons. "It creates a warm, nurturing house to come home to instead of a dark, scary one." The RadioRA system can even be programmed to be activated from the visor of an automobile. "Automated lighting is a wonderful feature to have, and the possibilities are truly endless," says Simmons, who has even installed special controls on the arms of wheelchairs for disabled homeowners.

LIGHT ON THE HORIZON
Once used primarily in commercial settings such as cruise ships, low-voltage, fiber-optic technology is now also being seen in residential design. "It's something we're really starting to see more of," says Bauer.

For one, it's terrific for mood and accent lighting. And it's great for hard-to-light niches where extremely miniaturized, non-electric lighting (such as battery operated lighting) is the practical and aesthetic solution. Light-tube fiber bundles and plastic light-transmission sources effectively brighten stairways, artwork, and glass blocks. High-end home theater designers are also using fiber optics as a way to creatively accent major media rooms.

Greg Margolis, the CEO of Hometronics, which has showrooms in Dallas and Las Vegas, says that fiber-optic installations can be quite labor intensive, but that the end result is spectacular. For one of his clients, Margolis created an award-winning star-filled sky. "This particular fiber-optic ceiling uses four different size strands, randomly placed, which gives the appearance of brighter and dimmer stars in the night sky. There are about 1,000 points of light in this ceiling, with every point being run to a central light source called an illuminator, which has a motorized wheel with small random black blots on it that cause the stars to flicker." It just goes to show that the sky's the limit in fiber-optic design.

HOME GALLERIES: ILLUMINATING ARTWORK
Designer Theo Kondos is recognized for lighting Trump Tower and Rockefeller Center in New York City, among other worldly projects, including upscale residential properties. His advice is simple: "Lighting the home is very personal. I want to learn how a person lives, because that's the way I want to light their home." Kondos' recently completed $5 million residential remodeling project for a property that faces The Kennedy Center was a case in which he relied on the owner 's lifestyle and personal art collections for inspiration. "We lit the corridors of the house basically like a museum," Kondos explains. "We used Cold Cathode, which is a bendable linear fluorescent light source. It's an excellent solution for a continuous line of light. We lit the corridors of the property using this technology." Cold Cathode is fully dimmable, offers a wide variety of color selections, and has extended lamp life. It is also free of the noise and flicker problems associated with some pesky fluorescent lamps.

LIGHT YEARS AHEAD WITH OLD WORLD FIXTURES
As technology advances, there are always those who want to utilize new lighting tools but keep age-old design methods. Hilda R.Yong of Luxus Showroom in Dallas, travels the world to locate unique factories that are still doing things the old-school way. She caters to the interior designers' contemporary needs, but she seeks handcrafted home furnishings and lighting too. She finds that Italian hand-blown light fixtures are highly sought after and tend to work with both modern and traditional looks for the home. "We have a wonderful new Murano line, Barovier & Toso," says Yong. "They are one of the oldest Murano blowers in the world." Blending the ancient production methods with current technologies seems to strike a new balance in lighting design.