Transform Your Home with Lighting

The mission of Truly Gifted is to bring beauty to your home. To make it a place where you love to be and you love your friends and family to be. Picking the perfect wall and décor art that reflects your personal style is important; but how do you showcase the special and loved elements of your home beautifully? Well, it’s all in the lighting. One of my learned gifts is interior lighting design. I trained under an expert, Phil Blosser of Blosser Lighting Design. The way he is able to make a beautiful home even more beautiful with direct lighting techniques is amazing! The irony on expertly lighting a home is that it is not accomplished by purchasing lighting fixtures and making them the focal point. It is quite the opposite. The trick is to “hide” the light source and direct light on the beautiful elements in your home. A well-lit house is a combination of dark areas interrupted with bright vignettes showcasing those beautiful and sometimes very expensive elements that adorn your house. It is similar to sitting in a dark theater and viewing the spectacular way the spot light illuminates the main character in a play. Envision guests in your house being amazed by one incredible vignette after another at an evening cocktail party or holiday dinner. Another advantage to accent lighting is that, with proper placement of fixtures, better task lighting can also be achieved. Most people think in order to read or perform a task that "brighter" is better and that they need a glowing orb in the middle of each ceiling. In actuality, “brighter” produces glare which in turn leads to poor visibility. An equally bright room also leads to a flat, uninteresting, one dimensional look. Directed light is both beneficial to the look of your home as well as functioning tasks in your home. It is biologically a fact that the eye is driven to light. Do you want to drive people to the light of a 75 cent light bulb, or the light illuminating your prized possessions? The same philosphy holds true with exterior landscape lighting.

Harvest Capture Designs are unique in that the photographer, Terree Yeagle, expertly manipulates light in capturing the image with her end goal being to create a print that is commanding in color and composition. The bold white Lotus contrasted on a dark background utilizes the same concept of lighting that I mentioned above. This is just one of the elements that make these prints so compelling. With the addition of small, hidden, directed low volt lighting these prints literally jump off the wall. Know that if you are handy and you have the ability to weave wires behind the walls of your house that, quite inexpensively, you can transform the home you currently have with better lighting. But, if electricity is not one of your gifts you’ll need to consult with a contractor or electrician who has the expertise to install the lights and get wires into sealed walls. Not many contractors nor electricians install lights in the manner I have described, as they still install lights today the same way they did 50 years ago - that's where a lighter designer or a contractor who works with a lightening designer is important. I can suggest some contractors/electricians via email.

The next time I write I’ll discuss the “color temperature” of light - as not all light is created equal. Feel free to ask me about your home lighting dilemmas!!! Email your lighting questions to sandy@trulygifted.us.com