Safety

According to the Electrical Safety Foundation International, more than 300,000 Americans receive non-fatal electrical shocks every year, and that’s not including the number of electricity-related deaths. Many of those incidents are caused by using outdated outlets. Using older outlets increases your risk of shock as well the chances of your home experiencing power outages and electrical fires. A licensed electrician in Fairfax, VA will protect your family from the dangers associated with outdated outlets, and it’s never too late to make the change.

Energy Efficiency

As with safety, older outlets simply can’t compare to the kind of energy efficiency provided by modern three-prong outlets. Two-prong outlets often need more electricity to power appliances, and they simply weren’t made to handle the demands of today’s high-powered electrical devices. All that extra energy means your energy bills are higher than they need to be. Updating your outlets is an effective way to lower your monthly electric bill and save money in the long run.

Better Compatibility

Good luck plugging your laptop charger or plasma screen TV into your old two-prong outlets. Two-prong outlets are a thing of the past, and most of today’s electrical devices can’t even use them. There’s nothing more annoying than having to search the house for an appropriate outlet or buying adapters every time you need to plug something in. Upgrading your outlets will make your life instantly less complicated.

Do you have a smart phone? What about a smart watch? Tablet? Laptop computer? Backup battery? Each of these devices needs frequent charging, which means the charger will take up a precious electrical outlet somewhere in your home for hours at a time, and could prevent you from having to plug in something else that you may need. What’s worse, what happens when you lose your charger and are left with nothing more than a typical USB cable? You can’t plug that into the wall, so what good will it do?

Well, that’s not exactly true anymore. In recent years, because the USB platform has become so popular for smartphone and other device charging, electrical component companies have begun to make wall sockets with USB plugs already built in! These combo outlets give you the best of both worlds, allowing you to plug in your devices with a regular USB cable while keeping your electrical sockets open for additional plugs.

A USB combo outlet is remarkably simple, and can be retrofitted to fit nearly any already-existing outlet. Essentially the two electrical outlets are exactly the same, but they also have two USB outlets squished right in between them. When the electricity is fed to the outlet, it also feeds directly into a step-down circuit, which brings the voltage down from 110 volts to about five, which is the standard for that particular plug technology.

The other benefit is you don’t have to worry about a large or bulky charger potentially blocking up the other outlet. While most manufacturers have gotten pretty good about keeping their wall chargers small, some larger units can take up a big chunk of space on your wall, potentially hindering access to the other charging unit. Getting rid of these units entirely and charging off a USB port keeps both plugs free and open for other uses.

Think something like this would be far too expensive? Think again. The average cost of a USB wall socket is generally anywhere between $10 and $25 each, making them remarkably cost-effective. When you consider you don’t usually need any more than three to four of these outlets, you can make this switch for at most about $100.

That is, provided your home can support these new devices. A wall outlet sits inside a small metal case that’s mounted inside your wall, known as a junction box. Most modern junction boxes are fairly large, and upgrading to these new outlets isn’t a big issue. But some older homes were built with smaller junction boxes that won’t be able to fit the increased size of a USB outlet, which is normally roughly twice as deep as a traditional standard outlet.

Well, it happened again. The kitchen and bath pros who make up the via www.marketwatch.com

Giant windows are great if possible. That’s a big IF, though. Sometimes, natural light isn’t an option, either because the laundry room is subterranean or otherwise windowless. Obviously, in the image below, natural light is not an option. Yet, the color temperature of the ceiling light is neutral enough to make this laundry room bearable while another, poorer lighting choice could have made this tiny laundry room annoying to visit and kind of scary.

You didn’t think I was going to avoid talking about lighting solutions just because natural light is such a great option for laundry rooms, did you? So, how should you light your laundry room? For any type of laundry room, there are some fundamental guidelines.

I’ve already suggested that you ALWAYS USE NATURAL LIGHT, when and if possible. And for your other light sources? Consider choosing lights with a Color Rendering Index (CRI) of as close to 100 as possible. A light source’s CRI is, in effect, a metric by which to compare the ability of artificial light to render color as well as the sun. 100 is the maximum CRI. Some lamps, like low-pressure sodium lamps, can actually have really low CRIs, while there are now some LED lights with CRIs of 95 – 98. If the sun isn’t shining in your laundry room, there are plenty of excellent options that closely match natural light’s ability to render color and help you keep your clothes clean and fresh as can be.

Layer your lighting.

OK, so this is the main theme in pretty much all lighting design guides. Layering your light pretty much means that you should think about general light, accent lighting, and task lighting. In the main section of a house, this might look like mini recessed ceiling lights with square bronze trim, elegant track lighting to spotlight a painting or picture, and a reading light by the chair or some under cabinet lights illuminating the bar counter. In a laundry room it might look like the image below.

Sometimes, in larger laundry rooms, you can have all three kinds of light. But, generally speaking, laundry areas are on the smaller side and are too focused on pragmatism for decorations that would benefit from accent lighting. Keep in mind that this is a generalization with exceptions galore, but, generally, the two kinds of lighting you’ll find in laundry areas are ambient overhead lighting and task lighting, and this scheme usually takes the form of a ceiling light or two and under cabinet lighting.

Creative Options.

Sticky lighting situation? Solve it with LED tape lights!

Here at Pegasus Lighting, we’re very excited to offer you innovative light fixtures to fit your every need. One product that’s really got it going on in the versatility department is LED tape lighting. If you’ve never seen tape lights before, they’re pretty much what they sound like, strips of LED lights with strong adhesive backing. They come in trimmable reels, are rated for use indoors and outdoors, and are available in white, colored, and color-changing varieties.

Need decor inspiration? Check out this saucy little video to discover all the different ways you can use tape lights for your home, office, interior, and exterior:

When will they catch you?