Lights, Camera, Action...

As you know, I'm in a lighting design class at school.  Contrary to what most may think, it's actually a very technical, mathematical and tedious class!  We're learning about how many lights are needed for each room and how many footcandles are necessary to produce good lighting in a space. Yep, footcandles. Bet you didn't know that was a word :)

Last Monday we went to a lighting show room and learned about different recessed cans and fixtures. I thought I'd share some of the knowledge I learned, then show some fabulous rooms with amazing lighting {because who really cares about the technical aspect anyways, right?!}


Lighting Tips:
- Each room should have two or more types of lighting. There is general, task, accent and decorative. Go here for more information on those in a previous post.
- There's no need for equal spacing between recessed cans. Instead, you should install the cans where you need the light the most in order to perform specific tasks.
-The best types of recessed cans are black or silver cans with the lamp placed high in the can. This direct the light down, and doesn't lead your eye to a big bright, white hole in the ceiling. 
-Recessed cans in a living room, or anywhere you plan to read a lot, isn't the best idea! Other lighting fixtures such as pendants, chandeliers, vertical fixtures and table lamps suit reading much better.
- The proper height to hang a chandelier above a dining table is about 30". You also want to make sure the chandelier or pendant is 1' smaller in diameter than the table itself- this allows for 6" on either side of the table {so people don't lean in and hit their heads on the fixture}


Alright...enough of that! Onto the pretty stuff...
1. Great use of general, accent and decorative lighting:

via

2. Well lit hallway with accent lights directed at bookshelves to highlight them:

via

3. Recessed cans in a row above the countertop {workspace} & decorative and task lighting above island:

via 

4. Great placement {and loving the TWO chandeliers- genius!} The eyeball lights pointing to the botanical prints is also a perfect way to highlight the art and help create a mood:

via 

5. Again, two awesome pendants placed over the dining table at the right height above the table:

via

In other lighting class news, we're currently working on grayscale renderings of a floor plan, showing where light is needed. The lightest color gray marker shows where the most light should be placed {sink, toilet, art}, and the darkest colors show where the least amount of light in the room will fall. My partner, Courtney {who blogs! Check it out asap!}, and I had some fun practicing last night with the powder room. Here's our finished powder room grayscale... {final product is the nice one in the back left corner. The others were practices. See our progress?!}

We'll be back soon with even more progress on the rest of the house.
That's all for today!


What do you think makes good lighting in a space??
Happy Thursday!
Love,