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A supermodel at work -Courtesy Theodore's Contemporary Furniture |
Judith Capen hopped up from the candlelit table and popped
on the overhead light. Suddenly, ghoulish shadows appeared beneath her twinkly
eyes and wrinkles sprayed cheeks that a second ago seemed cherubic.
"You never want to look into a light source," she said.
"Every time you glance up it's the Dracula effect, your eyes look like
black holes."
It's enough to make
one scream. One does.
Blame it on the wine.
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| The author digs a $10 Ikea spot |
It's amazing what lighting can do. Besides making you look more
attractive, and dare we say sexier, good lighting can be energizing, focusing,
relaxing, or simply illuminating -- accenting the room's best features,
minimizing the unsavory, and making your home a more enjoyable living and
entertaining space when evening falls.
With the plethora of lighting gadgets and gizmos available everywhere
from Ikea to Amazon to Home Depot and Restoration Hardware, just about any
effect is possible, inexpensively and often by dinnertime.
Capen, an award winning architect with Architrave
Architects, made her point about overheads. That harsh light, handy as it is
for Scrabble, killed the mood and threatened to put an end to a convivial over-dinner
conversation about....lighting.
"How do you know an architect designed a space? By the
number of wall switches." That's an architect joke, she said.
If Capen was designing a kitchen from scratch, for example,
she'd stop the cabinets eight inches from the ceiling, "and have a tube on
top so you have enough light to stagger through without tripping over the
cat." That would have one switch. Another would operate a brighter fixture
for the counter, "so you could see what you're doing with sharp
knives." Two more would operate an overhead light and a ceiling fan.
Instead of walking around the room and turning on lights, or
fidgeting with a dimmer, "I'd rather walk to the wall, flip some switches,
and be done with it," she said. "I can mix and match and get
distinctly different things versus one fixture that goes from light to less
bright."
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| Light at play in the Capen Weinstein home |
But most of us are not going to rip out the ceilings and
walls and install an elaborate and expensive new system. Instead, we sit with a
feeling of vague dissatisfaction, contemplating a room as clinically bright as
McDonald's, or fidgeting with a lamp shade to get enough light to read.
And Capen is quick to concede that you don't have to. There
are plenty of cheap sources of light that are plenty effective. "Like fluorescents," she said.
"Put them on top of cabinets where you don't see the fixture." This
is not just a kitchen trick, consider fluorescents on top of an armoire, or a
tall bookcase, anywhere the source is unseen.
Puck lights, little round battery powered LED discs that require no
wiring, are also handy for inside cabinets, under shelves, and dark corners.
"It's not about an expensive fixture, but what you can do with it to shape
a space."
It is possible to have it all, an ambiance that invites
pleasure, relaxation, stimulation and charm -- and even disguise a few of a home's
more unsavory issues by redirecting the eye to something more pleasing.
"What you want to do is layer the light, said San Francisco lighting
designer Randall Whitehead. "People try to do everything with one fixture,
but you want different types of light to successfully illuminate the room. The
best rooms use various sources of illumination to create a subtle design."
The language of light is pretty straightforward. Whitehead,
who is also a columnist and author of seven books on residential lighting, said
there are four lighting terms everyone should know: task, ambient, decorative,
and accent.
● Task lighting can brightly illuminate your desk, your closet, your kitchen counter, or your bathroom mirror so you don’t slice your throat shaving.
● Decorative lighting includes chandeliers, hanging fixtures in the foyer, and table lamps. “Architectural jewelry,” he calls these. “They are the supermodels of light; they just need to look pretty.”
● Accent or directed lighting highlights objects in a room. “Museums traditionally use a directed light on each piece of art and statuary,” he said. “It’s spotty, but dramatic.” However, when overused in a residential setting, “accent lighting can imply that what you own is more important than the people in the room.”
●That’s where ambient lighting comes in. We might call it the umami of illumination that bounces light around, blending all of the effects together and making the eye do a happy dance. This type of indirect illumination is the least understood and implemented but potentially the most bewitching element in any lighting scheme. “Add it and you become the star of your own home — as important as the objects in the space,” Whitehead said.
Just be cautious with the light you select, LEDs are
becoming more attractive in design and quality of illumination, "But a lot of what's out there is too
cool a light, a color not neat on skin tones. People look ghostly," he said.
"Look for warmer bulbs, particularly those called dimmed
incandescent."
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| Protrero Hill living room by lighting designer Randall Whitehead |
"The first thing you see is the beautiful, subtle leaf
pattern projected on the ceiling," he said. Shooting light upward from an LED fixture fit
with a dramatic stencil pattern makes the space feel larger and a rather bland,
low ceiling more interesting.
An unearthly lantern
that resembles a stainless steel pod dangles off to the side of the room. This
is the architectural jewelry, "it's not really providing illumination,
just an illusion."
Recessed lights highlight the coffee table, the fireplace,
and artwork. "Recessed fixtures should not be directed over seating, it's
harsh. An uncomfortable light to be under. "
Fading into the far left corner of the room is a black
shaded lamp "that throws light up for ambiance, and down for reading on
the sofa. It functions like a torchaire," providing light without calling
attention to itself.
The lights mounted outside and above the sliding glass doors
to the terrace, visually expand the space so the room feels as large as it does
during the day. Without them, you create a black mirror effect; you can't see
out and are closing off the room."
The result is a room shaped by layers of light, easily
adjusting to the needs of the homeowners, whether chilling in front of the fire
or entertaining a room full of guests.
Too often, however, our homes look their best only when
they're put on the market for sale. Now
why didn't I think of that earlier, one wonders.
"Lighting is an easy, cheap, and simple way of updating
the look of virtually any room in your house," said realtor Ryall Smith of
Coldwell Banker, who shared a few quick and inexpensive tricks he uses when
staging homes.
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| The kitchen set for cooking |
"Dark corners suck the energy out of a room," said
Smith. "Take a look at your living room and dining room and put in up
lights, you can get them at Home Depot."
Little lamps can make for big transformations. "Most kitchens,
for example, have only overhead lighting," he said. "Buy two small
lamps and put them in corners, or maybe one in the dark triangle behind the
sink, or on a stretch of granite counter. You won't need the overheads and it
creates and homey, warm feeling."
Like moths, humans gravitate toward the brightest light. If
you don't want your guests to congregate in the kitchen during a party, turn on
those little lamps and turn off the overhead.
"We put lamps in rooms where you wouldn't think of
putting in lighting," said Smith. "Plug in an attractive lamp in the
bathroom and it becomes part of the living space."
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| The kitchen set to keep out the moths |
With home technology, smart phones, and new applications
it's easier than ever to create a mood. You can program your lighting to change
throughout the day, "Now we have LED bulbs that will change color at the
touch of a switch," he said. "You can have bright white for task
lighting, maybe red for entertaining."
Lighting designer Nancy Schertler has lit up Arena Stage,
and just about every other theater around town, since 1976, unsurprisingly
waxed ecstatic. "You're painting with light," she said. "It's
magical.
"In a natural world you have the sun, on the stage you
figure out the angle the intensity of he light, creating a picture for every
moment in the play and helping focus the audience's attention."
In the home you can do the same, highlight a sculpture, the
texture of a wall, and enhance yourself. "Keep the lights low on the
table. You won't see the meal, or be able to read, but you'll look good,"
she said.
Can they make you look more youthful, too? "I was once
told the ingénue is too old, can you
make her look younger?" Shertler said with a laugh, "If I knew
that..."
A shorter version of this piece appeared in the Washington Post Real Estate section
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