Chandeliers For You - Chandelier Lighting

Recessed Light Fixtures And Their Use

Recessed lighting was originally something that was more associated with offices. Homes are not where you would have expected to find recessed lighting, and this is not due to any defect in them, just that it has been associated with offices that most people tend to overlook recessed lighting fixtures when thinking of lighting for their homes. This, however, has changed so we will explore the different places where you can use recessed lighting in your home.

Recessed lighting is very good in places where you need bright, general lighting. Places like the bathroom and the kitchen are therefore a very good place for them. Plus they are installed in the ceiling which means that they do not take up any space on the walls. These days with the size of the rooms getting smaller and smaller, this is a big thing.

Recessed lights like pot lights are very good in places like corridors and entryways once again for the same reason. The pot light spacing is very important here because of the impression it will give. Even a small foyer will appear very long if you reduce the spacing between them. Of course you will have to play around with the wattage/voltage of the bulbs so that you don’t get a very brightly lit room.

Installing a dimmer switch works very well with recessed lighting. Of course they work even with other lighting fixtures but with recessed lighting fixtures, the dimmer switch becomes doubly effective. Installing a dimmer switch means that you can dim down the light to the level you want, while still having the number of recessed lighting fixtures you need. A good example would be ankle height recessed lights that are dimmed down so that you can reduce the spacing between them. This gives the room a sense of spaciousness because the appearance of so many lights makes it look much bigger than it is.

You can also go in for low voltage recessed lights for the same reason if you feel that you don’t need to dim down or increase the level of light. The low voltage ones may be a good idea in a corridor, but not for recessed lighting placement kitchen lights.

There are a number of other things that you can do with recessed lights, and it is basically up to your imagination how you can use them. They are very versatile, and if you want some pointers, just look up a few images on the net.

Making Your Own Privacy Garden

Most of us, who love to enjoy the solitude of a garden, have just one problem….no solitude. With a majority of us living in large cities and suburbs, most often than not we share a lot of space with the people who live close to us. Enjoying a book in your garden or a quiet moment simply enjoying nature in our own back yards seems like an outrageous luxury to most of us.

Although this idea seems more a fantasy than a reality, it can be a dream come true if you want it to, with privacy ideas for your garden.

What is a privacy garden?

A privacy garden is a garden which provides you with more privacy, a more intimate feel when compared with a regular garden. This type of garden gives you some amount of area free from the intruding eyes of pesky neighbors as well as the ones that you want to avoid.

How easy is it to get one in my home?

Gardens with privacy are quite easy to get done. You can either grow hedges, fast or slow growing and to the height that you would want to ensure that you do get some privacy. When you decide on what type of hedge you want, all you need to do is check on the Internet to get the type of plant which will grow to the height and thickness you want. That is how easy it is to get your own private garden.

How much will it cost me?

The best part about these green privacy enabling gardens is that they are one of the cheapest privacy barriers you can erect on the boundaries of your home. No wall, panel or fence will cost as less. However it is a labor of love which will be well worth all the trouble you put into it.

Can I create a privacy garden myself?

Of course you can. You can create your own privacy garden and you don’t need landscape people or any professional. However, it is going to be a lot of work and if you are up for it, you will find that a garden you create by yourself will be much better than anything anyone else designs for you.

Low Voltage Landscape Lighting

Many lighting websites recommend that you use low voltage lights for your outdoor lighting requirements because it reduces your power bills. Obviously you cannot do this for your interiors because it’s you cannot use a low voltage light in your ordinary light socket. In fact most CFL lights are low voltage and the reason why they cost so much is because they have a small transformer in each fixture that reduces the voltage.

Many people therefore go with low voltage outdoor lighting because they feel that it will reduce their electricity consumption. Well they’re in for a shock because their electricity consumption will not necessarily reduce.

The difference is that although there is a relationship between wattage and voltage, it is not necessarily a direct one. There is no guarantee that just because you reduce your voltage, your wattage too will reduce.

Without going into the science behind electricity, Voltage means the strength of the electricity, while wattage refers to the amount of electricity. Thus if you reduce the voltage it just means that you are reducing the strength of the current. By reducing the voltage from 120 to say 12 you are ensuring that you will not get a shock because the strength of the current has been reduced. The wattage however will remain the same, which means that the light fixture will consume the same amount of electricity.

If you see any light bulb it will give you both the Voltage as well as the Wattage. Thus a bulb that says 120 V and 60 W means that it will work at up to a current strength of 120 Volts and will consume 60 Watts.

If you reduce the Voltage to 12 but retain the same 60 Watts there is going to be no difference in the power consumption at all. The only advantage of going with low voltage bulbs is that nowadays you get very high efficiency low voltage bulbs that will give you more output with less electricity consumed. You get bulbs that need just 20 watts of power to give you as much light as a 100 Watt incandescent bulb.

If you go with these, you will obviously get a savings in terms of electricity consumed. Also you save a little more because low voltage bulbs tend to last longer which means that they don’t have to be replaced as often. As to whether this savings is sufficient to offset the additional expense of installing a transformer, getting new light fixtures, and rewiring is up to you.

What Is A Light Table?

A light table is a table that has a light incorporated into the table top. Generally this kind of a table is used by draftsmen for drawing, and by doctors to check x-rays, although more often than not they would use a light board for this.

A light table is very useful here because it throws up contrasts much better than if you had a general light on.

Lately, however, light tables have started being used for other purposes than purely practical ones. For example you get designer light tables that have been designed by large design houses. You also get simple night light tables that can double as a night light.

With LED’s becoming cheaper, you are also able to get light tables in any color you want, with some of them even offering different lights.

If you are the nerdy sort, you get light tables that can be controlled by your computer so that you can change the color to suit your mood. Imagine having your table swirl in different colors to the rhythm of your music, much like your music player does.

These light tables are actually very simple and can be made by you if you are a little handy with your hands. All it requires is a square of sturdy, translucent plastic material to serve as the table top, and a couple of lights installed below for you to have a reasonably effective light table.

In fact with LED’s costing less than a dollar apiece these days, you can purchase strips of whichever color LED light you like and connect them all together so that you can have whatever color you wish to.

To most of us having a light table may sound totally useless, but imagine having guests home for dinner. Everyone is sitting around your living room, having something to drink. This setting is nothing unusual and most of the time, everyone will be relaxing around a couple of sofas with a tea table in the center.

Just imagine how the whole thing will look if this tea table was a light table. You need not have a table lamp and the light table will give everyone the impression of sitting around a fire.

Or imagine having a small light table beside every chair where your guests can keep their glasses. If the light is sufficiently dim, the light table will allow them to find their glasses in the dark while still not spoiling the ambiance of the room.

There are a number of thing that you can do with a light table, and what can be done is limited only by the depth of your imagination. Just look at a few pictures online for ideas and who knows, you may want to have one yourself.

Kitchen Ceiling Lights

All of us want our homes to look nice, and go to extraordinary lengths and expense to make our homes look as good as we want them to. Usually this is not a very difficult proposition and as long as we get the kind of lighting fixtures we like we are able to succeed at this.

Only in the case of the kitchen and the bathroom is this a problem because both form and function has to coexist. In a kitchen, not only should the light be something that gives it a certain tone, it should also be bright enough for you to perform the functions used in cooking and preparing meals. It should also be practical enough that it is easy to keep clean.

Yes clean. If anyone is going to be cooking food, whether you like it or not, there’s going to be steam and smoke coating the outside of any light fixture that you have. Having kitchen pendant light fixtures right over your cooking range may look really cool in a picture, but within a week you’ll find that they’re a pain to keep clean.

This is not to say that pendant lights for the kitchen are not good, just that any lighting fixture that you use should be installed in such a way that it does not give you any more work than you need.

Take for instance fluorescent kitchen lighting. They are bright, and you can get them in different colors also if you are really that particular about that. For example, if you want to have orange light in your kitchen it is a good idea because orange light tends to cover dirt and stains very well, yet does not give the impression of being dim at all.

All said and done, most of us will have stains in the carpeting, or on the counter that no amount of scrubbing will remove. We may also not want to keep replacing stuff in our kitchen because one careless moment and your new carpet has a stain too. Colored lighting is therefore a very good idea for the kitchen.

You can even go with LED kitchen lights. Not only do you get LED’s in different colors, they are also super-efficient. Most of us like to keep some light in the kitchen on during the night, and an LED is a good option for this.

Kitchen ceiling lights need not be drab and purely functional. As long as you plan well, you can have a very pretty kitchen without increasing the amount of work you have to do. For example how many people would have thought of lighting their kitchen with a spotlight? If you focus the light on to the counter, not only does it give you good bright light where you need it, you’ll be leaving the rest of the room at a comfortable level for you too.

How To Make Your Own Chandelier

Build Your Own Chandelier

All of us want to have a chandelier. Granted they are very nice to look at even when they are not lit, and they give the whole room a certain tone.

The only problem with them is that they are a little on the expensive side. Even a halfway decent one costs around $200 and if you want a really nice looking one, you’ll have to shell out twice that amount. Making your own chandelier therefore can be very good idea.

And it isn’t all that difficult to make either. If you have an old one, it is very easy to refurbish it, give it a coat of paint, get some beads or new shades and fit it all together. You can probably do the whole thing for less than $100.

Of course this method requires that you purchase everything and just assemble it. And while it may not be as expensive as a new one, is still expensive because all the new parts cost money. It is also not a true DIY chandelier.

Once you know what exactly a chandelier is, it is easy to make one yourself. All you need is a sturdy frame on which you can suspend the lights and something to function as the shades/decorative element.

You can use anything you want to for the frame, including a dried out root of a plant. You get amazing shapes and if you trim them down to different sizes, you’ll have a frame that is pretty much unrepeatable.

All you need to do is to screw in the bulb holders and attach the wires along the upper part of the branches with tape or wire and you’ve got the frame done. You will of course have to get all these wires together into one socket so that it can work, but that’s not too difficult.

Or you can take an old lampshade frame and hang tassels from it so that they hang down in a circular pattern. This is probably the easiest to do and does not require anything other than an old lampshade frame and some time. Once you have it done to your satisfaction, simply fix it below the light and you are done. You can make your own chandelier with beads, or any thing that you will want.

There are a number of tutorials on how you can do this, and if you have the time to spare, will cost you less than $10 to make. What’s more, some of the designs are even better than the ones that you get in stores, or are very similar to ones that cost quite a packet of money.

How To Make An Oil Lamp

An oil lamp is very similar to a candle and the physics behind the both of them are the same. Be it a candle, or an oil lamp, it has a container in which you pour the oil, or in the case of a candle, this is not required. You just add the wick inside it so that it absorbs the oil and brings it above the surface of the oil. You light the wick here and the oil vaporizes.

As the oil vaporizes, due to capillary action more oil is drawn up from the container and the whole cycles keeps going until there is oil left in the container.

Making an oil lamp therefore is very easy. There are a number of ways you can do this, with the simplest being you making a hole through the cap of a small bottle inserting the wick through it, and filling the bottle with oil. The oil can be anything from cooking oil to paraffin depending on your choice.

The flame is much brighter, and if you get a little experience in managing the length of the wick, there is very little to no smoke too. Olive oil has the least amount of smoke, and has no smell whatsoever. Most cooking oils do have some smell but smoke less than paraffin.

If you want a little more fancy oil lamp all you do is substitute the bottle for a more decorative container. For example you can pour some water into a tall cut glass tumbler and top it with a couple of ounces of oil. This will give it two different colors and if you choose the right kind of oil, can look very nice. Also because oil is more viscous than water, you can put things that will float within the oil, like flower petals or even very light beads.

If you want the flame to be within the container, all you do is put the wick inside. Punching a hole through a cork to keep the wick afloat is more than enough. You don’t have to think too much about an oil lamp chimney, as the only reason for chimney is to keep the flame from gutting in the breeze. For most indoor purposes keeping the flame within the container is more than enough.

Check online, and you will get a number of ideas to make your own oil lamp, and sometimes combining a couple of different ones will give you a really nice looking lamp.

High Pressure Sodium Lights

What are sodium lights useful for?

Sodium vapor lamps are not new. They have been used for a number of years in places where good light was needed along with low cost of operation. Thus starting from street lighting, to floodlighting and interior lighting in commercial establishments, sodium vapor lamps have been used for decades.

There are two basic types of sodium lamps, the high pressure sodium lamps and low pressure sodium lights. The difference between the hps lamp and the lps lamps is in their output and the color rendering.

The way a sodium vapor lamp works is very simple. The lamp as such contains a small amount of some other vapor like argon, xenon, neon or even mercury which will start discharging light immediately when current is passed into the lamp. There is also sodium metal inside the light that gets warmed up when the other vapor inside the lamp starts discharging light. Once the sodium reaches optimum temperature, it takes over. That is why when a sodium vapor lamp is switched on, initially it glows reddish or pink first before switching to the typical yellow. The pink light is from neon or argon, while if the light is white or blue, it means that the lamp uses mercury to warm up the sodium.

A low pressure sodium light only emits light in a very small bandwidth. This means that the color of objects is never true under a low pressure sodium light. Many reception areas are lit by low pressure sodium lights because it gives good light, but the narrow spectrum of the light ensures that dust and dirt does not show up too well.
A high pressure sodium light emits light in a broader bandwidth. This is because of two reasons. When sodium vapor is pressurized it starts to increase the bandwidth of the light emitted. Secondly the starter gas used is mercury which continues to produce light. Mercury produces whitish light which when combined with the yellow of sodium gives a nearly sunlight-like spectrum of light.

Commercial establishments that require very good lighting generally go for these high pressure sodium light because they last an average of 20,000 hrs. Mercury vapor lamps do give out better light and last almost as long, but many cities prefer the yellow of the sodium vapor lamps because it causes lesser light pollution than the white light of a mercury vapor lamp.