Fun Fact: His obsession with a chandelier led Italian astronomer, mathematician and physicist, Galileo to discover the law of pendulum motion.

While, we cannot guarantee that you will understand the laws of physics, we can guarantee that you will be captivated by the brilliance of a chandelier.

More than ever, we are experimenting with home lighting design to display our individuality, and nothing conveys unique style more than a fabulous chandelier.

Professional lighting consultants at Capitol Lighting can help you to illuminate your sense of style and find the perfect chandelier(s) to complete your decorative interior design.  A few simple laws of lighting and trusting your own good taste will get you there…

Chandelier Application and Design Tips from Capitol Lighting

Outstanding Applications:  From powder rooms to dining rooms, the chandelier enhances the appeal of your home environment. Chosen above all else for their aesthetic rewards, chandeliers also provide needed general ambient illumination.

Power in Proportion: To enjoy the full benefits of a chandelier, you must choose a fixture that is the correct size.  A chandelier that is too big will overpower; one that is too small will look out of place.  Finding the right chandelier size is easy:  Add the length and width of the room in feet, and then convert that number to inches (i.e. a room that is 12 feet by 16 feet would require a chandelier that is approximately 28 inches wide). When in doubt between available chandelier sizes, size up to achieve a more balanced presentation.

Special Considerations for Over Dining Tables:  When hanging a chandelier over a dining table, the total chandelier width should be about a foot smaller than the table width to allow approximately a 6-inch clearance for those seated around the table.

The Long and Short of It:  Over a dining table, the bottom of the chandelier should hang about 30 inches over the tabletop. The height of the fixture should measure about three inches for each foot of ceiling height, so for standard 8 foot ceilings choose a chandelier with an approximate height of 24 inches.

In a one-story foyer or in rooms with standard 8-foot ceilings, a chandelier should hang no less than 7 feet from the floor.  In a two-story foyer or in rooms with higher ceilings, the chandelier should hang approximately 8-10 feet from the floor. If your foyer fixture is to be viewed through a picture window, select a chandelier that will fill this space and center the fixture accordingly.  Note:  A two or three-tiered chandelier works best for rooms with higher ceilings.

Installation Awareness:  Be sure to employ a qualified electrician and follow National Electrical codes when installing fixtures.  It is especially important to consider the proper mounting procedures for hanging a heavier chandelier.  Usually fixtures weighing 50 pounds or more must be secured to the home’s permanent structure.

Maintaining the Glamour:  Keeping your chandelier in pristine condition requires proper cleaning and attention to specific instructions pertaining to certain finishes.  Generally, crystal and glass elements are kept clean with a basic soap and water combination.  Nonabrasive cleansers for most finishes are required.  Drying fixture components completely will help protect their luster.

Best Accessories:  Ceiling medallions, chandelier shades, decorative chain and cord covers may add to the ambience of the chandelier.  These items may be special ordered to give your chandelier a unique flair.

Imperative Additions:  Be sure to use the correct bulbs for your chandelier.  Where you have a choice between frosted or clear, choose the bulb that goes best with the fixtures finish.  Always employ dimmer controls with your chandelier.

Get High and Mighty with a Mini: The mini chandelier has become an increasingly popular lighting fixture around the home due to the versatility of its small size. Many designers are opting for mini chandeliers, rather than pendant or island lights, over long dining room tables and kitchen islands. Mini chandeliers are also gracing powder rooms and master bathrooms, as well as bedside tables.

Accent the Positive:  Although the chandelier should be the main lighting attraction, low-voltage spot lights, a matching torchiere floor lamp, +/or coordinating wall sconces make great designing additions to supplement lighting needs and complete the room’s décor.

The lighting experts at Capitol guarantee that you will captivate guests and enjoy your home to the fullest with the most illuminating fashions in home lighting and accessories.  Capitol Lighting’s lighting consultants can help you find the perfect chandelier for your home and give you tips on hanging a chandelier.

When discussing green energy solutions for the wind, a lot of people get nervous. People say wind turbines are unsightly or dangerous to wildlife. These people don’t realize that civilizations have been using wind power for a very long time.

As an alternative energy source, wind turbines produce a lot of energy and produce very little pollution. They are often are placed on hilltops or offshore. The winds offshore tend to be stronger and more consistent. In order to get the best unobstructed wind, feilds of turbines are usually built far enough offshore that they can’t be seen from the beach.

To understand the green energy solutions provided by the wind, you must first understand how they work. Wind is created by the sun heating the surface of the planet unevenly. With one side of the planet in darkness and the other in daylight, one is hotter than the other. Different air temperatures have different density. When hot air rises over cold air, wind is created. In any attempt to produce power, something is generated to move a turbine around. Common methods to accomplish this include running water or steam from burning coal. These methods are harmful to the environment, as they heat the water to unsafe temperatures or release toxins into the air. A wind turbine is a system that captures the kinetic energy of the wind to turn the turbine. Kinetic energy is energy caused by motion. When the turbine blades rotate, that motion causes a drive train inside the turbine to turn. A generator attached to the drive train captures the energy produced, and power lines whisk that power away to the consumer. There is no steam, no pollutants, and no dangerously hot water, only pure, green energy solutions.

The idea of the windmill dates back to the 7th century. In Persia, windmills were first used to turn the heavy mill wheels needed to crush grain into flour. They were mainly used for this purpose until 1887, when the first turbine was created to charge batteries in rural Scotland. The idea caught on fast, and by 1900, there were over 2500 windmills in Denmark. The Danes used the power of the wind to keep back the power of the sea, creating pumps for flooded areas. By the 1930s, many American farms used personal systems for battery charging, but it wasn’t until 1951 that one was finally connected to the power grid in the UK.

Modern turbines haven’t changed much from their original concept. They are made of modern materials and created on larger scales to capture energy more efficiently. One modern adaptation has been the ability to link several turbines together. This allows their energy to be combined and processed by a single substation, letting less power go to waste than if each were wired separately.

There’s a lot more to the cost of a light bulb than the price tag sticker. There’s the impact on your electrical bill, the tally of replacement bulbs you’ll need to buy, and the time you have to factor in for maintenance. Sure, the light bulb in your table lamp may take just a few minutes to replace, but what about your recessed cans that are two stories away from easy access?

We published an infographic on Lighting Facts, a program of the U.S. Department of Energy, created the one below, showing the five-year-cost of 100 watt equivalent light bulbs. As you can see, the low purchase cost of an incandescent light bulb doesn’t necessarily pay off in the end:

Prisons and correctional facilities are full of security threats, it’s just common sense.

That is why it’s a major task and a seemingly forever ongoing one to try everything in the book to reduce threats and increase security for everyone in, near, or even outside the facility.

Today we wanted to address how we can solve 2 major correctional lighting system and things you should look out for when finding fixtures perfect for your building and budget.

Firstly, a LED prison lighting system will reduce indirect stress and irritability in both inmates and staff.

Secondly, LEDs within correctional buildings will improve detection of movement, which we all know is crucial.

How you ask? Well, lets talk about each one individually and break it down a bit more than just one sentence. From there, we will talk about how to go about making the conversion over to LED, like we mentioned at the start.

Have you ever been around a light that was flickering and or buzzing? It can get annoying, and fast. Imagine living under these conditions, everyday all day; no break other than a few hours when you go outside. Sounds like no fun, and it can lead to some serious stress and irritability issues for both inmates and staff.

For obvious reasons, additional stress on inmates will never produce a good outcome for anyone. But, another important point is that this can effect your staff and guards too. It can affect their ability to perform at full capacity, which in combination with highly irritable inmates is not a good mix whatsoever.

With LED technology, they will never be susceptible to flickering nor buzzing. Not even near the end of the lights lifespan will they flicker or buzz, unlike other technologies commonly still used in such facilities. Thus, you can avoid any stress or irritability which may be caused from flickering / buzzing lights.

If you can’t tell where everyone is at every second, you’ve got an issue. This is especially important for outdoors during the time when it is dark out. Sure, some light is better than none; but why jeopardize your operations with a flickering light when you could upgrade to LED and get rid of the issue entirely?

As you may or may not know, flickering lights make it harder to not only detect movement, but also identify humans. Think of a strobe light, it’s a bit harder to actually make out what is going on entirely. This holds true with a flickering light, even if it isn’t as bad as a strobe light is.

Here we are going to list a couple of the other major general benefits that LED technology offers over other technologies such as metal halide, HPS, fluorescent, and similar.

There are really only two routes you can take, LED retrofit lighting kit will work perfectly. On top of that, retrofitting is a much cheaper option (typically) then a full replacement is. So, if you don’t need to fully replace then stick with retrofit kit LEDs and you will save a lot on your lighting system investment.

Conclusion

Flaws can always be picked at, especially in such tedious and unpredictable environments like the one we are discussing in this topic.

It’s never a good idea to use electricity around water; bathroom spaces always have a certain amount of humidity and steam as well as water in them. You may end up using electrical devices such as hair dryers and shavers when you are in this bathroom and the shower and bathtub areas always have some water. These can prove to be an electrocution hazard or a fire hazard and it’s important to be extra careful when you are using any electrical appliances in the bathroom.

We all need water to maintain health and hygiene. However, it’s also an excellent conductor of electricity. This means you can easily experience shock when you are standing in a water puddle and touch an electrical appliance. If your skin in wet, that gives the electricity an easier path and it can pass through your body in an unhindered manner.

That can be extremely dangerous as electrical shock can cause heart arrhythmia, burns and can damage your nervous system and lead to death too. If the grounding is improper or if the wiring is poorly installed, that can start a fire as well. And so, it is crucial to maintain electrical safety when you are in bathroom spaces.

Here are some useful tips to you can follow to avoid an emergency: