The idea of creating something new from a disused item, “reclaiming” or “upcycling” forces us to look at our surroundings with new, environmentally conscious eyes. Below are five examples of innovative and elegant lighting designs that prove that there are no limits to what the mind can create!

The pool at your Tampa home is an excellent place to enjoy recreation, to relax, or even to host events and parties. But are you getting the most out of your pool design? The use of light can add not only dynamic appeal to your space, but provides a greater level of safety. Not to mention the fun of a nighttime pool party!

The Living Room If you have a larger living room with high ceilings, you may want to choose an attractive lighting fixture, such as a chandelier to serve as the room’s focal point. Ceiling fans are also a popular choice for living rooms, but extra mood lighting may be necessary to ensure the room is well lit.

If you are wanting to have accents to the room, consider adding some attractive wall sconces. These play a major role in the aesthetics. Adding table lamps or floor lamps can play a major role in the overall mood of the room.

The Dining Room In the dining area, you want to put an emphasis on the table. To add to the appearance, add a chandelier or a pendant light that hangs low directly above the table. It is easier to light the dining room because the table is always the focal point of the room.

The Kitchen You want to ensure your kitchen is well lit. Because it requires a lot of lighting, you may want to incorporate more than one kind of lighting fixture into the room. One popular combination involves chandeliers and pendant lamps. Accent key areas by adding in track lighting or spotlights.

Bedroom You want a relaxing mood in the bedroom, so you may want to include task lighting such as reading lamps. You can create an attractive backdrop by throwing in some accent lighting. Lamps are always popular in bedrooms, of course, but if you add pendant lighting you can make the room have a different and interesting appearance.

Call the leading residential electrician in Chester County, PA to take care of your light fixture installations.

Millions of dollars can be saved every year in every major or little city in this country and those around the world. This sounds like a newspaper headline but it is the actual hard truth. The amount of energy necessary for street lighting is massive. For example, Britain needs about 1900 gigawatt hours for street lighting alone, which yields 3 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions which could all be avoided and greatly reduced. Imagine cutting that down to 20%. Can it be done? Of course it can, LED street lights have been proved to have that effect.

With the economic crises, cities have started to switch off lights to save up on the electricity bill. This is one of the many solution proposed. Unfortunately, LED street lights were not proposed and that is a major mistake.  There are installation costs you might say. Well, sometimes there are, but these are equal to zero based on savings achieved over time. It means not seeing the whole picture because the lighting systems now used on the streets needs extensive costly maintenance while LED street lights will need almost none.

This is not a small fact. Maintenance means dozens of monthly salaries and costs with equipment and cars. This is only for one city but imagine the positive effect of this at a country scale or even a global scale. It will actually make a difference. In addition, these LED lamps are retrofit so there are not additional costs on that. Simply when one light burns out it should be replaced with an LED which reduces your costs by not having to fully replace your lights entirely.

There have been cases when the LED obvious benefits are:

The list can surely go on. Most people get stuck on the price but at such a big number of Street Light LEDs needed any dealer will be more than happy to negotiate a solution for the whole city so the costs will be lower than normal. In addition, the provider will stick around with advice and consultation.

In the end, it is just a matter of putting ideas into practice. Only this way we will manage to create a better world.

Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (1825-1911). Her bio is beyond the scope of this entry, but I encourage you to follow the link and check her out. Get a little perspective on life today by reading a paragraph about this amazing human being and poet.

Harper’s poem, “Let the Light Enter,” depicts light in an interesting and fresh way, fresh still, even 100 years after her death. Poetry, generally speaking, is like a vast collection of opportunities to learn about yourself and the world in which you live. I invite you to take a minute to read “Let the Light Enter.”

The Dying Words of Goethe

He just urgently wants to watch the “balmy sunshine/ Play around” his deathbed. He just wants to experience the sensation of light doing it’s thing. “More light!” he demands. It strongly suggests that appreciating and enjoying the beauty of light is what Goethe, a lifelong thinker and poet who lived from 1749 to 1832, finds most worthy of his final precious minutes. That’s a big deal. In choosing between the pleasure of thoughts and the pleasure of the material world, he chooses the latter. It’s like all the things that seem to separate us from the natural world are shown to be false in the final moments. Think of a dog lying on a rock in the sun. Maybe that’s the purest state of being, just lying there, not thinking much, and enjoying the pleasure of the light, the sound of a brook. And maybe that’s why Goethe wants to pass away in such a state.