• Cure Clock: 2.5 weeks to go!
• Assignment: Read Week Six, pp. 185-204
• Clean out your bathroom. Green your personal products.
• Experiment with natural scents for your home.
• Light to inspire with CFLs and LEDs. (It is possible!)
• Members: 1,735 (closed)
Whew! I'm sorry my Cure posts this week have been a little off schedule. Apartment Therapy's 2009 Holiday Giveaway launched today, and we were working really hard on it yesterday to get it all set and ready to go. (We're so excited about all the awesome gifts and think you will be, too!) But back to the Green Cure: how has your week been going? You've probably been making your way through your bathroom, but we also want you to focus on lighting in the rest of your apartment. Good light can transform a space, no matter how small. A well lit room should have at least three unique points of light that vary from bright, concentrated light to soft, ambient light. We advocate using energy-efficient light bulbs, of course, like LEDs and CFLs, but many people have trouble finding one that gives off a pleasing glow, much like an incandescent. Well, we have some recommendations for you!
"With good lighting you can create a flow of light throughout your home, which leads the eye through each room and invigorates the space. In a more sophisticated room, even the intensities of the lights vary, from strong light such as reading or task lights to small twinkling lights such as candles and indirect illuminators such as floor or table lamps."
-pp. 195
On Lighting:
We do not use the overhead lights in our apartment... at all. Occasionally we turn on the kitchen or bedroom light if we're looking for something, but in general we rely on lamps and paper lanterns. Thankfully, we get wonderful light in our apartment during the day, so the problems come when evening falls. We currently have two lamps in the living/dining room on either side of the couch, and a floor lamp with a sharp, concentrated beam of light that we aim up at the ceiling. It provides a nice, warm look to the room that we compliment with candles, but it's still pretty dark and not very well suited for certain things — reading, for example. We get nice ambient light from the twinkle lights coming from our kitchen, but the room really needs a pendant light over the dining room table, and perhaps another lamp.
Our bedroom is faring better. Instead of the overhead light, we bought 6 paper lanterns and hung them in a cluster over our bed. (I don't currently have a picture, but I'll try and take one this weekend!) We actually expected the light to be a bit more atmospheric, but it turned out to be very bright! The cluster covers the ugly ceiling fixture and, once turned on, provides a bright yet soft light that is very pleasing.
Which brings me to my next point: lightbulbs. We've been using energy-efficient lightbulbs in our home for a few years now, even though we were not always crazy about the light it gave off. The biggest complaint we hear about switching to CFLs or LEDs is that the it destroys the look... and if lighting is as important as we say it is, a too-harsh or sickly hue can really kill the mood. So what to do?
This is what I did: after doing a lot of research, from the likes of this post by The New York Times, this post from Popular Mechanics, and a number of our own posts, including this one on the best CFLs, we settled on n:vision 9 watt Soft White bulbs from Home Depot (equivalent to 40W) for the cluster lamp, and we've been very happy with them. Put 6 of them together, and it gives off a ton of light! We have them in our living room right now, but think we could use a brighter bulb for reading. All in all, though, definitely one of the better CFLs we've come across.
A good compromise: If you're not willing to swap out all your lightbulbs for CFLs, try this: put CFLs in some parts of your home (like your hallway, stairway, and exterior lights) and do a 50/50 mix with low wattage incandescent bulbs in your living room and bedroom, or rooms where you want a softer, warmer glow. Every little bit counts!
For more on energy-efficient lightbulb recommendations, check out these posts:
• Where To Use LEDs in Your Home
• The Best Energy-Efficient Lightbulbs
• Best Compact Florescent Lightbulbs
• Best CFLs
• Pharox 6w Dimmable Lightbulbs
• Warmer CFL Lighting
• Incandescent Shaped Smart CFL Bulb
More Inspiration... provided by you!
We love how Flickr member Bugsywife put her mouthwash in a decanter. Such a simple and great idea!
Flickr member chloe & ivan bought new towels in a fall colors.TODAY'S COMMENT QUESTION:
What do you do about lighting in your home? Do you use only energy-efficient bulbs, or a mix? Do you have a favorite brand? Share it with us?
POST INDEX
• Week 6 - Intro
• Week 5 - Tips & Tricks
• Week 5 - Intro
• Week 4 - Tips & Tricks
• Week 4 - Intro
• Week 3 - Tips & Tricks
• Week 3 - Intro
• Week 2.5 - Show & Tell
• Week 2 - Intro
• Week 1.5 - Tips & Tricks
• Week 1 - Intro
CURE INFO
• Main Cure Page - Fall 2009
• Sign-Up Here
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JOIN THE GREEN CURE DISCUSSION:
I often use the strategy of mixing CFLs with standard bulbs in the same fixture. This provides a broader spectrum of light and also avoids the initial darkness you sometimes find when CFLs take a while to "warm up." As CFLs keep getting better, hopefully I'll be able to move to all CFLs eventually.
Oh, I have one other issue with CFLs: is it possible to make ones that can be dimmed?
view VeryThorough's profile
We have cfl's in our whole house, except for 1 in our bedroom & 2 in the living room. So 3 out of 25 are incandescent. Not too bad.
My huge green thing is that I scheduled the insulation company to come get our attic to R49! My husband already did the air sealing up there, so all's left is to blow in the cellulose. I can not wait for us to have our house feel warmer & to use less getting there. Next major project is fixing the windows.... but until we save our $$$$, we'll have to put up the plastic again.
view tallsarah's profile
Is there someone out there, living within the EU, who has some great tips on green bulbs? My experience so far is with bulbs of nasty colours only and since the electrical system in my flat is a bit so and so (old building), the really expensive bulbs unfortunately don't last that long, so I'm unwilling to experiment some more. TIA!
http://luftskibet.wordpress.com/
view luftskibet's profile
Oh and I absolutely love the three first pictures of the article!
view luftskibet's profile
I am making a lot of Cure progress! I've been trying to do something everyday that makes the apartment I live in feel more like a home, even if it is just remembering to do the dishes promptly or sweep the floor. It is so helpful for me to think about my home as something that needs daily care and respect.
Yesterday, I organized a mess of paper bags that had accumulated on top of the fridge (I keep them for recycling bags), and today I bleached the living room and dining room curtains and installed some coat hooks in my entryway closet to hang all my bags and scarves. I also recently took my piles of papers, sorted through them, recycled what I didn't need, and organized everything else into folders which I put in several magazine holders which can fit neatly on the bookshelf, eliminating the need for a file cabinet. Wow! These little things really add up and are those little touches that make a space feel cared for. It is such a huge improvement just having coat hooks, I feel so much more organized. I also just bought a great vintage fan which I love, and I feel like that adds a lot of character to my living room (as well as being highly effective).
I am so thrilled with the way my space is transforming, in ways that I didn't even really expect. I also keep checking back with House Tours and really thinking about what I like and dislike about spaces, which is helping me define what I like, what I love, and what I want to live with. There is a lot that I like but that I wouldn't necessarily want in my home, so this is really helping me figure out my personal style and what I want my space to be like for me, right now, in LA, not for a rich forty-something in the Hamptons, etc.
On my agenda now: My bathroom definitely needs some attention. I am painting the countertop (a horrible brown faux-marble laminate) and the walls/cabinet and hopefully removing the horrible paint from the original 1920s tile. In my kitchen I am also going to try the paint remover on the tile. I don't know who thought it was a good idea to paint tile, but I will get to the bottom of it (no pun intended). Also have to find a good place for my boyfriend's guitar stuff and our recordplayer and laptops in the living room. Also looking forward to getting the poster and frame I ordered on Ebay, and hanging it up!
Hopefully I can get a lot of stuff done tomorrow and by the time Thanksgiving rolls around my apartment will look a lot more loved! I am so excited about keeping this Cure mentality and continuing to move toward a space that makes me happy and that I want to spend all my time in!
view livc's profile
@livc: Wow, amazing post! Good luck with defining your home - even if it might be a turbulent time, I find it very exciting. My last phase was a rather white one, of which I'm sick and tired now, and the colour splashed house tours are an excellent antidote for that.
Even if it's not what you're looking for, check this out (found it somewhere else here on AT), Second Skin by Dutch Rene Siebum:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6FqbHNyk5k&feature=player_embedded
view luftskibet's profile
I installed a dimmer!
view Lizzy's profile
VeryThorough, you've been able to get dimmable CFLs for years.
view Rebekkap's profile