Beyond the Basics in Residential Lighting  

By Stan O. Humphries, P.E.

My previous articles have been on lighting design basic design for residential lighting.  Those basics are layering the lighting in a room and providing all three types of light to attain that layering.  Those three types of light are ambient, accent and decorative lighting.  These basic types of lighting combined together in a room can beautifully light that room by themselves.

Going beyond the basics for a room can add the extra to the room that makes your house extraordinary and special.  There are a lot of beautifully lit houses in our valley.  But going beyond the basics takes a lot of creativity and sometimes courage.  Luckily, the lighting industry provides an endless array of lighting fixtures that we can use to add zest to your house.

If we go beyond basic lighting, we are most looking for lighting opportunities and ideas.  Some ideas are using fiber optic lighting and color filters.  First let’s look at fiber optic lighting.  It’s new and of medium expense.  It simply entails using a light box and transmitting the light through glass or plastic fiber optic strands to the area you want.  The big attraction to fiber optic lighting is that you have removed the light source from the room.  So you don’t have the heat or electricity to contend with.  This enables you to put light where you haven’t had it before, in small spaces, at inaccessible areas, in water, where you might come in contact with the light and more.

Some ideas for fiber optic lighting would be creating light patterns at the ceiling, curving around your bar or outlining a water feature.  The fiber optic light is available in as small as 1/4” diameter.  With this small of a diameter we can make very small coves to accent the border of a ceiling or ceiling crowns.  If your ceiling is a wood pattern, working in the fiber optic can help liven up the wood and make it a highlight of the room.

At your bar you can use the fiber optic strands in an endless number of ways to make that bar stand out.  It can be as simple as mounting the fiber optic under the bar to light the face of the bar.  Or you can mount the fiber optic on the surface and use color filters to add whatever color you want to connect the bar to the rest of the room.  Another method of using fiber optic is to just use the end of an individual fiber optic strand to make a bright spark of light.  So think of a black bar face with small pinpricks of light creating light patterns.

Water features are always attractive and until recently there is usually one or two point sources that provide pool, spa or fountain lighting.  Those point sources can only provide a limited amount of light and leaves murky shadows in the water.  Fiber optic lighting is used in these features to softly illuminate the water.  Usually the fiber optic lighting is used to outline the water’s edge.  This provides even illumination through out.  Taking it one step further, we provide a blue color filter and it makes a beautiful luminescent pool of water.

I’ve already mentioned how we can use color in light to brighten up a bar area or a pool of water.  The fiber optic fixtures are attractive because you slip in color filters very easily.  But most high quality accent fixtures have several options for color filters.  We usually use these color filters to enhance the finishes in a room.  For example a butternut wood coffered ceiling can be made to glow warmly with an amber color filter on the ceiling wash fixtures.  Or a red stone fireplace can be given even a deeper red with red filters on the wall wash fixtures.  The general rule is to match the color filter with the color of the wood, stone, or finish that you are trying to enhance.  But going beyond the basics means breaking rules, so experimenting is allowed.  Color filters can be reasonably changed out so experimenting doesn’t have to cost a lot of money.

What makes lighting exciting is going beyond the basics.  All that is needed to go beyond the basics is creative ideas and the right light fixtures to make those ideas work.  Look for lighting opportunities in your new construction or remodel and make that space extra special through creative lighting.

As always if you want a copy of any of my past articles, please call.  Also call me if you have any lighting subjects or feedback that you’d like to talk about.

Stan Humphries is a lighting professional who is the president of the mechanical and electrical design firm, Architectural Engineering Consultants.  You can contact him at work, 970-748-8520, or via email at stanh@aec-vail.com .