Day 246: Let There Be Light

I thought it'd be good to share what we got up to last weekend before embarking on another weekend of getting down to business. It was a wonderful long weekend of savouring summer, enjoying a Firefly marathon and being decently productive on the house front. The big accomplishment came in the form of recessed lights for the basement bathroom.

Ta da! We have lights - and 4/5 of a wall! (Don't mind the torn bits at the bottom. Rookie mistakes to be covered up by baseboards or panels or something of the sort.)

We've got six recessed lights installed: two parallel rows of three. The bright ball on the wall is the pig tail light that was on the ceiling. It's temporarily in place because we quickly discovered that six 280 lumen LED recessed bulbs are not sufficient to light this space.

There was much discussion about the placement because there are some don'ts when it comes to recessed lighting. Things like "don't put it right over the sink because it'll create shadows on the face" and "don't put it right over the toilet because no one likes to do their thing in a spotlight."

(Incomplete) lighting configuration above future sink and toilet. And check out the electrical outlet installed entirely by yours truly. No eyebrows were singed in the making or use of that outlet... and let's just keep it that way.

Looking at this photo, it appears we've broken both of those rules doesn't it? The middle of the sink lines up with the middle stud and that orange cap on the drainpipe. The toilet will be centred on the hole in the floor to the right. These recessed lights are pretty close to "right over" the sink and the toilet but we went with it for two reasons.

1. The vanity lights will be two sconces - one where the temporary light is and the other on the second stud from the right, symmetrically over the sink. These sconces will cast general light on your face (when you come to visit and use the bathroom downstairs) and should prevent shadows in the mirror.
2. The recessed fixtures we got allow you to tilt the bulb to focus the light where you want it - e.g., not directly on top of the toilet.

Tilting bulb.

The fixtures we got are these little units that are designed to be installed into an existing ceiling. There are little metal "teeth" that point down and press into the top of the drywall in the ceiling, securing the fixture in place. Since we don't have any ceiling yet, Garrett chopped up a few laths from a chunk of plaster wall we had cut out for insulation.

Recessed light fixture with temporary supports.

As you can see, once the light bulb is in place, you can tilt it to focus the light wherever your heart desires. The bulbs are LED and they are the one aspect of this recessed lighting situation that I'm still debating about. Not the LED part. I love that these babies are supposed to last over 20 years. By the time they die, we should be just about ready to hop into flying cars, no?

The issue I have with these bulbs is the colour temperature. There were two options in the store: warm or cool. They had a sample display with a warm bulb and the colour looked so orange! We went with the cool ones but, now that they're in place, I fear they may be a bit too much cool for me to handle.

"Cool white" bulbs.

These bulbs are 4,000 K, which is on the cool side of typical lighting options. (It's most obvious in the first picture above if you look at the light cast on the floor.) As shown in this handy dandy chart, an incandescent bulb (do people still use these?!) is a much warmer 2,700 - 3,300 K. If we're remembering correctly, the "warm" version of these LED bulbs we have are 2,700 K. According to The Internet, there are arguments for both. Apparently "skin tones look most flattering in medium to warm color temperatures (<3500K)." Also, most of the CFL bulbs we're using are warmer so the 2,700 K bulbs would "blend well with the rest of our residential environment." Others suggest that the cooler temperatures provide more "accurate" colour for things like applying makeup (a real priority in our combo laundry room...) and that the more daylight-like colour temperatures "can make you forget that a room has no windows." I think it'll come down to personal preference and priority. Would you find it jarring to walk into a coolly lit room when the rest of the house is warmly lit? Or do you like the idea of more accurate, daylight-like colour?