LIGHT AND BRIGHT

[Guest guest]

LIGHT AND BRIGHT

For the last several months, we've been living in a construction site

while renovating our loft. Though we've been inconvenienced mightily,

we've also enjoyed seeing the new place materialize bit by bit. The

lighting has worked out particularly well, achieving both our

aesthetic and environmental goals.

 

It doesn't seem as if lighting would have much environmental impact,

but it does. Nationwide, home lighting accounts for nearly 10 percent

of residential electricity consumption. This matters because

electricity is the single largest source of global warming gas

emissions in the U.S., as well as a major contributor to smog.

 

The bottom line: you can help cut air pollution by using less

electricity to light your home. One way is by designing your home to

render artificial lights less necessary, by making better use of

natural light. Presumably, this is what most people did in the days

before the light bulb. Another is using more efficient lights that

operate with less electricity.

 

Here are some specific measures you can take:

 

1) Locate furniture to make use of natural light. In my office, for

instance, we set the desk back in a corner at right angles with one

of the windows. I do paperwork at the front of the desk where the sun

shines directly. The monitor is situated at the rear, where it's

shaded, to avoid glare. There is no need for artificial light on

clear or partly cloudy days. On summer afternoons, I pull a shade

down halfway to keep cool.

 

2) Use task lighting. Activities that involve detailed work, such as

cooking or writing, require bright illumination. Rather than light

the whole room to the high level required, put extra lamps in the

workspaces -- just as you'd put a reading lamp next to a bed. That

way, additional light is available when needed but not used

unnecessarily.

 

3) Install interior windows in the walls between one room and

another. This increases light flow in your home. If you're unlucky

enough, as we are, to have inner rooms with no windows to the

outside, you'll find that interior windows make a huge difference.

They don't eliminate the need for artificial light, but do lessen it.

 

4) Paint surfaces in light colors. Dark colors eat up the light,

while light colors reflect it. Our old kitchen, which was mauve, was

like a cave. In our new hay-colored kitchen, the light bounces off

all the surfaces. On sunny mornings, no artificial lights are

necessary, though the kitchen is an interior room that only receives

natural light via interior windows.

 

5) Use mirrors to reflect light. This is an age-old technique, not

only to lighten a room, but also to make it seem larger. We used a

mirror, set at right angles with an outside window, to reflect light

down a hall and into our windowless family room.

 

6) Install a skylight. This isn't something we could do, since we

live on the lower floor of an apartment building, but it's a great

way to flood the right kind of house with natural light.

 

7) Put energy-efficient compact fluorescent bulbs (CFLs) in your most

frequently used light fixtures. This is something everyone can and

should do. CFLs use a third to a quarter of the energy that

incandescent bulbs do to produce the same amount of light. And they

don't have any of the disadvantages associated with fluorescents from

the old days. They turn on instantly, don't buzz or flicker, come in

a range of light tones (including the warmer tone associated with

incandescent bulbs) and screw into standard light fixtures.

 

According to the Energy Star website, if all American households

replaced their five most heavily used incandescent bulbs with energy-

efficient lights, it would be like taking 8 million cars off the road

for a year -- or closing down 21 power plants. The benefit? Keeping

more than 1 trillion pounds of global warming gases out of the air.

 

From my perspective there's no downside to any of these energy-

reducing measures -- only the pleasure of living in a light, bright,

well-designed home.

 

—Sheryl Eisenberg