How To Select The Right Lighting Fixtures For Your Home Lighting Design

Lighting your home properly is a very important consideration. It can have a lot to do with your overall mood and how easily you can accomplish your tasks at home. So let's discuss the different kinds of lighting that are available, and how you can best use them.

The first step in understanding lighting, is to understand that there are two basic types that are in use in most homes today. The first is incandescent lighting, which is produced by running current through a small wire called a filament. The light that is produced is very bright and warm, and is suitable for almost any task.

The second kind of indoor lighting is called fluorescent lighting, and is produced when electricity passes through a glass tube that has been coated inside and filled with gas. This kind of light is very soft and gentle, but it's big advantage is that it can produce up to five times as much light from the same amount of electrical current as an incandescent light.

Generally speaking, there are three levels of lighting used in the home depending on what task is being performed. For general relaxing and low-level lighting, 40 - 80 watt incandescent bulbs will work fine. For most general tasks, 100 - 150 watts will suffice. But for very specialized type of work, 180 - 300 watts may be needed.

For reading at home, it's good to have a floor lamp that is placed behind you and slightly to the left or right. If you're only going to be reading for a short while, 150 watts should be fine, but for prolonged reading 250 watts will do better to prevent eye strain and fatigue.

To light a desk or worktable, you'll most likely need plenty of illumination for the work at hand. Most often, it's best to actually have a small lamp on the desk itself to provide the best quality light. For these kind of tasks, usually a minimum of 200 watts of incandescent light, and 40 watts of fluorescent light will be needed.

In the bathroom, it's good to have lighting that helps eliminate shadows under your eyes, nose, and chin. That's often best accomplished with fixtures on each side of the bathroom mirror. Sometimes a fixture that has a series of smaller 25 watt bulbs can be used to good effect. You may also want to consider using some fluorescent lights here that employ soft white tubes for lighting that is most flattering.

In the kitchen, you need concentrated light on the countertops and workstations for best results. Fluorescent strip lighting often works very well under kitchen cabinets to light up your countertops. This kind of lighting tends to be even, with very few shadows, and free of the heat that often accompanies incandescent light.

By planning out your home lighting fixtures in advance and positioning them correctly in each room you can be sure to get the best lighting possible under a wide range of circumstances.

You can find out more about home lighting design and discount lighting fixtures by visiting our Home Improvement website.

How To Find The Right Lamp Or Ceiling Light Fixture For Your Child's Bedroom

Before hitting the closest lighting retail outlet in search of the perfect child lamp or ceiling light fixture for your child's bedroom you need to first become familiar with the basic concepts of effective lighting. In any kid room you need to consider ambient, task and accent lighting.

Ambient light is the kind of light that fills the whole room. Be sure to add a sufficient amount of ambient light for the safety and comfort of your child. A ceiling light fixture is a great source of ambient light.

Task lighting is the kind of lighting that brightens a particular area. Such lighting is ideal for desktop use as it doesn’t cause glare and eyestrain. A decorative child lamp is most often ideal for both desktop and bedside use.

Accent lighting should be ideally situated to add to the room’s comfort level. It is purely decorative in nature and can be used to highlight treasured accessories.

In an infant nursery situation lighting is just as valuable to the parents as it is to the newborn. Since you’ll be spending a considerable amount of time in your baby’s room it’s important that you have an effective ceiling light fixture as well as a decorative child lamp or two that gives off sufficient light. Such light is important when it comes to changing your baby or reading stories.

A dimmer switch is another good feature to have in a kid room. Such a switch allows you to brighten the room when required and then lower the light at bedtime.

The safest kinds of ambient light fixtures to use in your child’s room are wall scones, recessed fixtures and track lighting. The advantage here is that these types of fixtures won’t get damaged if your kids start rough housing whereas another type of child lamp may. Also keeping any light sources out of your child’s reach is always a good way to prevent burns.

A ceiling light fixture is an ideal alternative as you never have to worry about lamps being knocked over.

For the rooms of younger kids consider general ambient lighting that comes from a ceiling light fixture. Over time you can add localized task lighting into the mix as your child begins using her room for more refined activities like reading or arts and crafts.

Now let’s move from the benefits of a ceiling light fixture to that of the child lamp.

When it comes to selecting a child lamp for a desktop consider one that not only compliments the décor of the room but is angled in such away that it avoids unnecessary stress on your child’s vision. Positioning a child lamp so it shines directly on your child’s desk or work area can cause glare and eyestrain.

Before purchasing a child lamp be sure to look for one’s that won’t tip easily, produce too much heat or is too heavy in the event that your child does manage to knock or pull it off her desk or table top.

A good child lamp is well-balanced and able to be fastened securely onto a desk.

If your child has a computer in her room, you’ll want to ensure that she has ambient as well as task lighting that’s compatible. The trick here is to use task lighting to illuminate what is on the monitor and use an ambient light source to eliminate any contrast.

If your child likes to read in bed consider an adjustable child lamp near her bedpost. What better way to encourage your children to wind down their day than to read? Reading will become more appealing to your child if you make the experience as comfortable as possible.

If you wish to place a child lamp next to the bed make sure it lines up with your child’s shoulder when she’s sitting up ready to read. Lighting that comes from behind her shoulder and slightly to the side will be the best for her eyes.

Proper lighting is only one element to creating a kid room your child will love and love to spend time in. For more kid room decor and accessory tips visit http://www.decorating-kids-rooms.net In addition to being co-owner of the site, Sherrie Le Masurier is a professional organizer and lifestyle columnist who specializes in decorating and organizing kid room articles.

How To Select The Ideal Lighting Fixtures For Your Home Woodworking Shop

Shop lighting is such an important aspect of the woodshop, but rarely given the amount of thought that it needs. Typically the shop owner will go out and buy a couple of strip fluorescent light fixtures and hang them up. That might be all that is needed to light up the workshop. But as you set up the tools in your woodworking shop you might find that you are casting a shadow over the tool or worse there is a dark spot where a fixed tool is sitting. Now you have to reposition the lights or purchase more light fixtures. The most common home woodworking shop light fixture is the tube fluorescent lighting. They are energy efficient, low cost and easy to install.

Before making a plan for the lighting fixtures in the workshop, plan and layout where all of the woodworking tools will be arranged in the workshop. This will make planning the lighting needs much easier and will help prevent dark zones and casting shadows over the work surface of the tool.

The type of tool and the tool's working area will help determine how much light is needed. Table saws need to have at least their table top well illuminated. The out feed table needs some light but not as much. For a table saw a four foot fluorescent tube light over the table saw table will provide plenty of light. A drill press needs much less light, but it needs to be more focused onto the drill press table.

Garage workshop

A woodworking shop in the garage has its own specific needs. The space is multiuse space that is used as a workshop and a place to park the family vehicles. The woodworker's tools must be portable so that they can be rolled out of the way to make room for the vehicles. For a typical two car garage that measures approximately twenty two feet by twenty four feet, two to four two tube fluorescent fixtures will provide ample lighting of the work space.

Celler workshop

Having a woodworking shop in the basement is nice and allows for a more permanent setup of the shop tools. A basement shop does present some interesting challenges. Most basements have a low ceiling height. The typical basement ceiling height is 7 feet. This makes lighting a challenge since suspending lights from the joists leads to potential head banging and being struck when moving material around the woodshop.

Basement ventilation is typically poor at best where heat from the lighting fixtures can make it uncomfortable to work in.

Hang fluorescent light fixtures in between the joists. Attach a light weight chain to the sides of the adjacent joists and suspend the fluorescent light from the chain. Hang the fluorescent light fixture so that it is flush with the bottom of the joists. This will help keep it out of the way and still provide ample light. It might be necessary to use an additional light or two because of the shading caused by recessing the light.

Freestanding shed

The typical barn style shed design creates a large open space. Fluorescent light fixtures are the simplest and cost efficient choice in illuminating the work space.

A typical twelve by fourteen foot workshop two four foot fluorescent light fixtures are more than enough. Additional task lighting may be needed if there is overhead storage over the work bench.

Task lighting

Task lighting gives you the light you need right where you need it. A work light with a built in ten or thirteen watt light bulb is a popular choice. These lights require a hook, nail or something else to hang on. However you are limited to the brightness of the light based on the model. Clamp on reflectors are very effective task light. Use compact fluorescent light bulb in the clamp on reflector. You can use bulbs ranging from thirteen watts to 24 watts. This yields an illumination from 60 watts to 150 watts, with very little heat from the bulb.

Determining the right amount and type of lights the woodworking shop is a very important choice that if done incorrectly will result in frustration and possibly injury from a power tool. If done incorrectly it will require you to redo the lighting to correct any deficiencies.

The wood working hobbyist contains additional articles on the different types of http://www.wood-working-hobby.com/2006/12/08/what-type-of-shop-lighting-should-i-use/">shop lights and which is best for your woodworking shop.

Outdoor Lighting Fixtures Increase Safety and Decrease Expense

It is simply amazing to see what forms of alternative energy are changing our daily lives! Now more than ever, harnessing natural resources in the form of solar power, hydropower or wind turbines is becoming more of a priority. The cost of oil continues its upward spiral and there doesn't appear to be any end in sight. As time progresses, saving energy dollars will become more and more critical. You can do a few things right around your home to save money today. This doesn't mean that you have to go wild and purchase a complete solar energy system to realize free energy. In fact, you may want to start out with some simple solar landscape lighting. Solar outdoor lighting fixtures around your home will offer a safer environment for you and your guests.

By simply allowing the sunshine into your home on a cool day, you will get warm the room. This is considered to be a passive source of solar energy. A lot of the time we use this energy without thinking about it, but there are methods of harnessing this energy to store it, control it or move it to a more convenient location. If you are remodeling your existing home or building a new one, consider integrating plans for a passive solar power system. Even adding a few extras and add-ons to your existing home, you will find that over time your energy costs will remain the same or become less.

You are bound to save money even over a short period of time when you use solar application products such as solar outdoor lighting fixtures, fan chargers, solar ovens, radios, and battery chargers. Remember that you may have to make a considerable outlay initially, and solar energy will take time to get used to. According to experts in the field, most systems repay themselves in a matter of five to 10 years. After all, it is prudent to save where you can! You may even want to start small with a solar ceiling fan or some solar decorative landscape lighting around your home and yard.

By Terry Price - Are you tired of the same old yard, dark and uninteresting? http://www.ceiling-fans-interiors.com/landscape-lighting.html or would you like to make a huge difference in how your home looks after dusk, as well as improve your yard safety and security? http://www.ceiling-fans-interiors.com/131-landscape-pathway-lighting.html

Microsoft Great Plains Furniture & Fixtures - Implementation & Customization Highlights

Microsoft Great Plains, former Great Plains Software Dynamics / eEnterprise was introduced in 1993 as first Microsoft Windows and Macintosh based graphical accounting/ERP application for Mid-Size businesses. Considering the history of furniture retailer and custom assembly lines – they showed up on the market about five decades ago and they have automated their business operations with Unix-based businesses in the late 1960th and earlier 1970th. You can find such furniture resale systems as Storis, which is Unidata based application, automating furniture retail outlets. Let’s consider the options.

• General Ledger. There is no need to immediate replacement of legacy retail stores automation software. It is reliable and proved to work over years. They usually sit in very reliable Unix hardware such as IBM AS/400 or RS6000. You would need just import General Ledger transaction to the system, where you would have flexible and quick financial reporting. In this case you need Unidata export and feed it into Great Plains General Ledger. Use Great Plains Integration Manager or heterogeneous SQL queries.

• Payroll. Great Plains would be reasonably priced payroll solution if you process payroll inhouse. If you have less then 500 employees – then Great Plains Standard douse excellent job and software price would be around k$10. You will have to pay annual maintenance program and receive Payroll taxes and federal magnetic media updates to keep you safe from the payroll taxation errors and miscalculation. If you cross over 500 employees line – Great Plains software price will be around k$30 and you could find cheaper solutions with unlimited number of employees – look at Accpac.

• eCommerce. If you are replacing your legacy system, then you could build eCommerce upon Microsoft Great Plains Inventory Control (IV) and Sales Order Processing modules. Looking into the future you should expect increasing portion of you business to come from eCommerce ordering. Here you deploy eConnect and have your or contracting developers do the job. If eConnect is too expensive – you could appeal to experienced developers, who has set of custom stored procedures to work with SOP10100, SOP10200 and IV00100 tables

• Commission Reporting. In Furniture outlet shift manager commission is based on her/his employees-salespersons performance. And it is usually tiered. We saw very complex and proprietary formulas. Our suggestion is to realize it in SQL Stored Procedure and then you could create Crystal Report with parameters to calculate and report commission amounts

We encourage you to analyze your alternatives. You can always appeal to our help, give us a call: 1-866-528-0577 or 1-630-961-5918, help@albaspectrum.com

Andrew Karasev is Chief Technology Officer at Alba Spectrum Technologies (http://www.albaspectrum.com), serving Microsoft Great Plains, CRM, Navision to mid-size and large clients in California, Illinois, New York, Georgia, Florida, Texas, Arizona, Washington, Minnesota, Ohio, Michigan

Modern Light Fixtures Serving Double Duty

Early light fixtures seemed to have a flair for the dramatic. Impossibly large ornate chandeliers greeted guests in foyers and lit large dining rooms while providing a decadent ambiance. This mindset continued with the creation of the Tiffany lamp at the turn of the century. Louis Comfort Tiffany's new lamps featured scraps of stained glass fashioned together to form exquisite shades with solid metal bases, a timeless design that is still produced today. These and other early light fixtures were a graceful combination of beauty and practicality.

This didn't continue, however. A horrible lull in lighting design blanketed a fairly large portion of time resulting in some drab and boring light fixtures. They weren't all bad, of course, but it seems like the ones that ended up in most people's houses were. Bad, that is. The time I'm referring to here is roughly from the 1950's to the 1980's. Perhaps lighting was viewed from a more utilitarian point of view during this time, or mass produced lighting was just in a funk, design-wise. Whatever the case, the bulk of the lighting produced during this time just wasn't all that impressive from a style and design perspective.

Over the last ten or so years, a shift back to artistic and innovative lighting designs has taken place resulting in some beautiful fixtures. Floor lamps are no longer defined by the standard base and shade construction, as slim tower designs and multi-headed models have become staples in many manufacturers catalogues. These contemporary fixtures are works of art as much as they are sources of light. Glass and metal have replaced ceramic and linen as the most common materials used, adding to the modern aesthetic of these fixtures.

Many of the same features listed above apply to table lamps as well. In a lot of cases, manufacturers simply make a smaller version of a floor lamp to work as a corresponding table lamp. However, there are still plenty of contemporary table lamps that employ the base - shade standard. It just works. Modern shades have begun to take on different shapes and can be found in a variety of materials, though, so these aren't your grandma's table lamps.

Check out the Eco-Lights website for a great selection of contemporary floor lamps, table lamps, and outdoor lighting.

Ceiling Lighting Fixtures

Ceiling lighting fixtures are primarily meant to hold bulbs in position, directing light in the desired direction. They come in a variety of designs, shapes, sizes, types and ranges. A ceiling lighting fixture should be chosen in accordance with specific requirements like the amount of light it diffuses or disperses, direct or diffused lighting requirements, maintenance requirements, installation cost, overall style of the space, etc.

One should always look for lighting fixtures that maximize the light efficiency of the bulbs. An unwise buy based purely on the exterior beauty might absorb too much of the bulb’s light or emit light to the cavities in the ceiling. Efficiency specification of ceiling lighting fixtures should be considered while making a purchase. Apart from that, one should remember that specific lighting fixtures are meant for specific bulbs and the lighting fixtures should be checked for these criteria during a purchase.

The overall look and style of the space should be taken into account, so that a ceiling lighting fixture complements and accentuates the look. A huge chandelier looks out of place in a small space, just as a small chandelier is easily overlooked in a large space.

Indirect lighting fixtures should be chosen to avoid glare and visual fatigue formed by direct lights, especially in rooms with reflective surfaces and in offices with computers. A ceiling lighting fixture in the kitchen can house an energy-efficient florescent bulb.

Some of the ceiling lighting fixtures include fixtures for chandeliers, recessed lighting fixtures, indirect lighting fixtures, florescent ceiling light fixtures, energy efficient ceiling lighting fixtures, flush mounted, semi-flush mounted and track or monorail lighting. Their style can range from traditional, conventional, trendy and stylish, rustic, Victorian, Tiffany, tropical and many more.

They can present a wide array of finishes. While installing ceiling lighting fixtures it is important to measure the height of the fixtures from the floor. Depending on the height, a suitable lighting fixture should be chosen. Ceiling lightings and fixtures can be used in hallways, patios, foyers, stairways, task areas, and bedrooms.

Lighting Fixtures provides detailed information on Lighting Fixtures, Bathroom Lighting Fixtures, Ceiling Lighting Fixtures, Outdoor Lighting Fixtures and more. Lighting Fixtures is affiliated with Outdoor Lighting.