Lighting Basics

L IGHTING How to pick the right lamps, fixtures, and lighting strategies for each room in the house. Use track lighting sparingly, and make sure it relates to the space-such as here where the track outlines a heavy exposed beam. Don’t locate a track in the middle of a flat ceiling. For millenia, useful artificial lighting could be produced only by an open flame fed by oil, wax or-toward the end of the 19th century-piped gas. The electric-power revolution changed this picture utterly. While an electric light cannot duplicate the special qualities of sunlight, it is hard to imagine a world without it. Electric lighting is everywhere: in our vehicles, our streets, our buildings, our movie projectors and TV picture tubes, our signs. Our strategy