Lighting It Up

Getting ready to put up the roof trusses

Most of us never pay any attention to lighting fixtures.  As long as a light comes on when we flick a switch, we don't care where that light came from, as long as it's bright enough for us to see.
Designing and planning a new house, however,  forces us to think about light.  When you start to pick your light fixtures things suddenly get very complex.  I know a little about light.  From my exposure to photography (pardon the pun) as a hobby since  I was in my  teens,  I know about direct light, indirect light, and diffuse light.  I know about color temperature, e.g., incandescent light vs florescent light vs daylight, and how that is described in degrees Kelvin.  From Human Physiology and physics, I know about light intensity as measures in lumens, and contrast.
Nowadays we can light our houses with incandescent bulbs, florescents, halogen lights, and, most recently, LED lights.
There are myriad light fixtures to choose from: recessed lights, flush, semi-flush, pendants, track lights,  spots, floods, sconces, table lamps, torchieres, and chandeliers.

This is the ceiling of a chapel illustrating four different types of lighting: pendant lamps, recessed can lights, indirect lighting and spot-lights.

There are dimmers.  There are remote controls and programs to control lighting.
Then there is style or theme.  There's Art Deco, Contemporary/Modern, Rustic, Cabela's, Victorian, Asian, and on and on.
There's even medical considerations.  Many migraine sufferers cannot tolerate florescent lights.  As we get older, our retinas are less sensitive, so we need more light to be able to see. 
Personally, I like to have more than one choice in lighting in any one area.  To my wife's great chagrin, when I remodeled a bedroom in our old cabin, I put in 4 light circuits: 1 for recessed lights, 1 for ceiling fixtures, 1 for track lights, and a spot above the bed for reading. Overkill?  Maybe.  But in our kitchen in Tucson, I can turn on recessed mini-floods on a dimmer, or a wraparound florescent fixture and the room looks completely different depending on which lights are on.
I estimate we will have about 42 different lighting fixtures in the new cabin, and for each we have to make decisions.  I want to have a modern/contemporary look for the inside of the cabin.
Here's an exercise:
The loft will have a high ceiling with exposed beams, trusses and wood paneling.  It is about 20 X 20 feet.  I have to guess what it will look like since the roof isn't actually up yet.  Here's what I think it will look like looking up at the ceiling.

I was going to put 4 pendant lamps hanging from the ceiling to get the light source closer to the living area.  However, the nice lady at the lighting store suggested 4 double floods, mounted on the sloping ceiling, and directed downward.  I balked at first, thinking it was going to be too hard to change the bulbs when they burn out.  I've seen too many older persons come into the hospital with broken hips or worse, from falling while trying to change a light bulb. 

For Pendants:  Pro's  Lights closer to the floor.  Con's  Draw attention away from heavy wooden trusses and logs which are supposed to be the visual focal point of the room.  Space too cluttered with 4 pendants and 2 ceiling fans.

For Floods:   Pro's  Don't draw attention away from heavy wooden trusses and logs.  More open space.  Con's   Lights are hidden among strucures in the ceiling.  Direct lighting, casts harsh shadows.  Hard to change bulbs. 


Then I had an inspiration.  I found a new LED PAR 30 flood rated at 60 watts which actually consumes 15 watts.  It costs $35 at Home Depot.  However, it saves $285 over the life of the bulb!  It lasts 50,000 hours!!  That's longer than I am going to be alive.  I will never have to change the bulb!  Eureka! That's the solution.  Now I just have to come up with an extra $1000 in the budget for light bulbs.

Bonus Photos!:

Maybe I should call this the Mud-blog