Lighting Articles
If you’re
planning to redecorate your home this year, perhaps the most
important aspect of your project will be the decisions you make
about lighting. It can dramatically influence the feel of a room,
making it warm and inviting, cozy and comfortable, or cold and
distant at the flip of a switch.
“Whether
you decide to go with recessed cans, lamps, chandeliers, or
pendants, decorative lighting is probably the most important
accessory you can buy. If chosen correctly, it can have just as much
influence on the look and feel of a room as your best piece of
furniture,” says Joe Rey-Barreau, an architect, educational
consultant for the American Lighting Association and professor of
interior design at the University of Kentucky... [
Read more about Lighting trends ]
Establish
the mood with pendant lighting
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Perfect for your home kitchen or living room, Home
Improvement Club's glowing pendant light adds a soothing effect to your
environment. These lights are perfect overhead a home bar, or perhaps
over a living room sofa, where you can enjoy an after-dinner drink.
For restaurant and lounge owners, pendant lights are a inexpensive option to
add classy and romantic atmosphere to your social gatherings.
And for those who love the retro look, we also have
modernized old-school versions of the globe that can definitely introduce
some funk back into your humble adobe...
[Read More]
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Pendant Lighting - An Important Addition to Any Room
Pendant lighting not only light up your house, but they also add
colour and personality to your interior. They're shapely,
chic, sexy and funky. If you've overlooked pendant lighting,
you're missing out on an accessory that is rapidly coming back into
style.
Pendant lights are scaled-down and more affordable versions of
chandeliers. They are single-hanging entities without the
extra branches. The light may be stripped to a bare bulb suspended
from a cord, or housed in a decorative shade crafted from
glass, resin, metal or fabric. In actuality, pendant lights
can be every bit as fancy as chandeliers, because they can be
studded with Swarovski crystals or dangling gemstones.
Pendants can range in size from a tiny 2 inches, to a lantern
that is 22 to 48 inches in diameter. Interior designers and
architects appreciate them because they're more interesting than the
recessed lighting that create holes in ceilings. Pendants can be
used to spice-up a room or to instigate colour schemes. When
hung in multiples (I.e. in straight lines or staggered at different
heights for effect), they can also effectively set a mood.
Mini-pendants typically serve as task lights which define the
work surface of a kitchen island or bar. But they can be also
used in foyers, bedrooms, and bathrooms. Wherever space is an
issue, mini-pendants can be hung from above, effectively freeing up
space in the room for furniture and other things. Coming soon,
Home Improvement Club will introduce a
retro pendant
light, which can be used to add some character into an otherwise
dull environment.
Pendant lights have a rich history which dates back to 2700 B.C.
The Greeks were especially fond of diminutive hanging lamps of clay,
which burned animal fat. While the Greeks continued to employ clay,
the Romans used bronze for oil lamps in the first century A.D.
Around the third century, glass added a new aesthetic: a peek
through to the flickering light source.
There are exquisite examples of decorative Byzantine lamps of
glass framed in bronze and dating to the 11th century. Hanging
kerosene and oil lanterns from the 19th and early 20th centuries
still turn up today at flea markets here and in Europe. With
more ornate crystal chandeliers originating in France in the 17th
century and England in the early 18th century, smaller pendants with
opalescent or frosted glass or crystals were designed up to the
early 20th century. The popularity of mid-20th-century
modernism and the re-edition of these pendant lamps have drawn a new
set of admirers, as have the classic light sculptures of Isamu
Noguchi and Mariano Fortuny.
In the 1980s, innovative contemporary lighting shown in Milan at
the Salone del Mobile furniture exposition sparked excitement in
design magazines. Around the same timeframe, European pendants
began to appear. Viewed as accessories, pendants could be
chosen for their form, colour, pattern and texture. Pendants
definitely added style to a room. A white paper shade that looked
like an upside-down layer cake created a crisp, strong focal point
over a table.
Nowadays, glass offers a kinetic dimension. Light dances as it
shines through glass, and colour comes alive. A formidable selection
ranges from opaque bell shapes, etched or frosted solids, or lively
patterns that are polka-dotted or striped. Recent efforts have
been made to replace glass with a durable polyethylene polymer.
The advantage of
polyethylene
pendant lighting is that it can have similar colour and
reflective properties as glass, but it has unique opacity
properties, and is more resilient to breakage.
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Pendants should not be seen as household furniture, but should
command the same respect as jewelry. They sparkle, enlighten,
and soften a clean, austere environment. Pendant lighting may
have been one of the most important design innovations of the past
century.
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A flashlight which can last for up to 100,000 hours
The problem with the standard flashlight is that either their batteries or their bulbs seem to be dead every time there’s a power failure. Unless you have ultraviolet vision, changing batteries in the dark, assuming that you have them, can be an exercise in futility... [ More ] |
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