Reno Diary #11: Choosing Lighting Fixtures for My New House
Updated: Aug 31
2 days to close.
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Yesterday (3 days to close) was spent running non-reno-related errands. Tiresome, but necessary.
Today, two days away from close, while I was watching a few NFL preseason games, it occurred to me that I could use the time taken up by annoying truck and beer commercials to start looking for lighting for my new home.
Except for the living room, every room in the house plus the hallway had identical, shiny-new, overhead Boob Lights. Out of curiosity, I found a similar model online for $22 each.
I hate Boob Lights. They’re cheap, they’re ugly, and they do a terrible job of lighting.
Based on the booming market for boob light covers, a lot of people feel the same way.
And I had six of them. (Yes, six.)
I had other lighting challenges in addition to my boob lights:
The original bathroom sconces put out about 25 watts of light each. They also had integrated outlets that I was terrified to use because fire is bad.
The combination overhead fan and light in the bathroom was so loud that you had to shout to be heard over it.
None of the 3 exterior lights worked.
All the lighting had to go, and I had to get replacement fixtures quickly. The electrician was scheduled to start a few days after close and I wanted to get the lights installed during the first month of the reno.
Three commercials later, after mulling my list, I decided to roll the bathroom sconce selection into next week’s bathroom fixture selection project.
Before I started visiting my favorite lighting websites, I thought through what I’ve learned about lighting to help me select my lights.
Interior Lighting 101
Lighting Categories
You can divide interior lighting into three general categories: ambient, task, and accent lighting. Each category fulfills a different function in a room.
Ambient lighting (also called general lighting), is lighting that provides overall brightness to a room, sets a mood (like cozy, functional, or relaxed), and allows you to navigate safely in a room (i.e., avoid falling over the ottoman you forgot to move back into place before you went to bed). Most ceiling lighting falls into this category.
Task lighting is exactly what it sounds like: lighting that allows you to perform tasks like reading, sewing, chopping vegetables, and writing a blog post without going blind. Floor and table lamps fit into this category.
Accent lighting is used to highlight a focal point, like a painting or sculpture, or create visual interest in a room (like a wall sconce). Accent lighting adds depth and drama in a room and includes sconces, spotlights, and strip lighting.
Some light fixtures perform multiple functions. Table and floor lamps can provide ambient and task lighting depending on their design. Some lighting also works to accent features in your home.
For example, my bedroom chandelier provides ambient lighting for the room and accent lighting on the ceiling; my robin’s egg blue floor lamp serves as a reading light and highlights the George Nelson Sunburst wall clock above it.
Although most rooms should combine all three lighting types to maximize comfort, function, and visual texture, my primary focus when selecting new ceiling lights was to match my choice to each space’s function.
What to Consider When Choosing Lighting
What should you consider when selecting lighting if you want to get it right the first time? It’s a surprisingly long list.
Room size and height
Larger rooms need more lighting than smaller ones (duh). That can translate into bigger or multi-light ceiling fixtures, recessed lighting, and a mix of table and floor lamps for ambient and task lighting. High-ceilinged rooms can accommodate pendant lights and chandeliers; lower ceilings are better suited to flush or semi-flush mounted lighting.
When my sister bought a house with an open-plan first floor, she immediately installed recessed lighting throughout the space for uniform ambient lighting and overhead lighting in the kitchen, added table and floor lamps for coziness, reading, and crafting, and under-cabinet LEDs in her massive display cabinet to highlight her art pottery collection. Lighting trifecta.
My rooms were relatively small, with standard 8-foot ceilings, so unusually bright lighting was not a priority for me.
Room function
Kitchens and offices need task lighting in addition to ambient light; living rooms, dining rooms, and bedrooms are more suited to ambient light with task lighting if needed in specific areas.
I was mainly after ambient light in my Boob Light replacements.
Room Layout
In an open-plan layout, it’s best to stick with one large statement ceiling piece and layer ambient, task, and accent lighting throughout the rest of the space. If your open plan space has multiple junction boxes, for example over the kitchen and dining areas, select coordinating ceiling lights. In homes with compartmentalized rooms or spaces, select ceiling lighting that best complements the room’s function and the other lighting in the room.
Since my home had specific rooms, I could select lighting that maximized how I planned to use each room.
Temperature
Temperature is the color emitted from your lighting fixture. It is measured in Kelvins and ranges from warm (2700-3000K) to neutral (3500-4000K) to cool (5000-6000K). Warmer temperatures are recommended for spaces intended for relaxation, like living rooms and bedrooms, with neutral temperatures for kitchens and bathrooms and cool temperatures for workspaces.
While most decorators default to warm lighting, I wanted neutral temperature lighting for my new fixtures so my colorful interiors would stay the color I intended when my lights were in use.
Brightness
Brightness is measured in lumens; since ambient ceiling lighting is intended to light a large area, look for lighting in the 1500 – 2000 + lumens range. In contrast, since task lighting is intended for a specific area, not an entire room, lower lumen lighting is better; for example, reading lamps should be 700 – 1000 lumens and kitchen counters should be lit by task lighting in the 500 – 1000 lumens range.
I wanted bright lighting—but not bright enough to light, say, a football stadium.
Building My Lighting Criteria
I started with Boob Light replacement in these rooms:
Laundry room (at the far end of the kitchen)
Main kitchen
Dining room
Hall
Bedroom
Office
I built my criteria for replacement ceiling lighting before I started shopping online:
Placement: the current ceiling lights were all placed in the room where you would expect them to be. Considering some of the decisions made when building the house, I was thankful that logic had prevailed with the overhead lighting. No expensive changes needed there.
Brightness: I wanted all the replacement lights to be bright (1500 to 2000 lumens or higher) with the exception of the dining room, where I wanted the light level to be adjustable up to 1500 lumens. I wasn’t interested in seeing my dinner with surgical precision.
Lighting type: LED lighting, which dominates the market for good reason. It’s energy efficient and bulbs last for years (if not decades). Keep in mind that many LED lights have a bulb already installed that’s configured to work for years without a bulb change—so when the bulb goes, the light needs to be replaced.
Temperature: neutral lighting (3500 – 4000K) so my walls and décor stayed true to color.
Fixture type: I wanted flush ceiling lights in most places; in the bedroom and dining room I could choose pendant lights without the fear of smacking my head.
Style: I wanted the lighting in the public spaces to honor the house’s midcentury style. In other places, like the office and hallway, I wanted the lighting to be as unobtrusive as possible.
Availability: I wanted lighting that was in stock since the electrician would be installing the lighting in 2 or 3 weeks.
I figured that having my lighting criteria before I started looking would help me find the right lighting for my house without dithering—or returns.
What I Actually Selected
The living room was the only room with no ceiling light. I planned to add ambient lighting using a combination of floor and table lamps in room’s four corners and a floor lamp for reading at one end of the sofa. That combination would address all the ways I intended to use that room—relaxing, entertaining, watching TV, reading.
After some mulling (actually, it took just under a minute), I decided to replace the bedroom’s boob light with my treasured Italian crystal chandelier, currently installed in my condo dining room. I would swap it for a new drum pendant in the condo dining room before I put the condo on the market.
When I told the electrician that I was installing the chandelier in my bedroom, he quipped, “That will turn your bedroom into a boudoir.”
Works for me.
Five Boob Light replacements to go. Next, the kitchen. Since I had ordered kitchen cabinets in a painted gray finish, I wanted a colorful lighting fixture to add a little zjoosh. I googled “colorful pendant lamps” and saw this:
PERFECT. Colorful, not too low-hanging, takes LED bulbs. The bulb shades pointed downward, directing the light where I needed it. Checking the measurements, I saw it would easily fit between the kitchen cabinets and would hang at the optimal level to light the entire kitchen. I placed my order. One more Boob Light down!
That was easy—too easy?
Now for the dining and laundry rooms. Since these lights flanked the kitchen, I decided that I should buy the same light to visually tie that section of the house together. And, since I had selected a very colorful light for the kitchen, I wanted to go with a more subdued midcentury style pendant.
I started Googling using variety of key words. After three searches consistently showed me results I liked from lumens.com, I went to the Lumens website, selected “pendant lights”, narrowed my search to “white”, and found my lights a few minutes later.
Simple postmodern shape in white with a bit of metal trim for sparkle. LED bulb, 1600 lumens to provide good ambient light, but an adjustable lighting level for dining. Adjustable pendant length. I hit the Buy button.
On to the hallway and office! Since these ceiling lights were being used in the less public areas of the house, they didn’t have to make a design statement. Their role was to provide bright white light.
After some judicious Googling, I found a simple, circular, 1500 lumens flush-mount LED light.
Again, perfect for my needs, super bright, and gratifyingly inexpensive. I placed the order.
OMG. NO MORE BOOB LIGHTS.
Final Lighting Replacement
One more preseason football game to watch and one more light to go—the bathroom ceiling light with an integrated fan. It needed to fit the current opening (which I measured during a beer commercial) and be bright, simple, and utilitarian, and the fan needed to be quiet.
The obvious places to look were Home Depot and Lowes. I checked the Home Depot website first, but the light that fit my dimensions and had high ratings for the quiet fan was out of stock indefinitely. Boo.
On to Lowes, where I found a fan that fit my criteria, with rave reviews for the quiet fan. I placed an order to be picked up the following day.
It took less than an hour to find and buy my interior lighting.
For a few giddy seconds I thought I was done—until I remembered the exterior lights.
I needed to select and buy them now, too, so they could be installed in the same timeframe as the interior lights.
Interior lighting principles apply to exterior lighting with a few exceptions. Since I’d already reviewed them as part of my process for buying my interior lights, I could mentally hit the ground running with my exterior light selection.
Exterior Lighting 101
Interior lighting categories—ambient, task, and accent—apply to exterior lighting, too. Like your interior, layering all three lighting types around your home’s exterior adds character and warmth and makes your home more welcoming.
Where exterior lighting differs from interior lighting is that the primary focus should be on safety—lighting paths, doors, and dark corners. That’s why it’s essential when selecting exterior lighting to double-check that the light you’ve selected throws light where you want it to go.
I learned this the hard way the first time I stood on my Pittsburgh home’s front porch looking in my handbag for my housekeys. The house light, installed above the front door by the previous owners, was a wall sconce that threw light into the shrubs on either side of the door rather than on the human standing in front of the door.
I replaced it within weeks of buying the house.
My Exterior Lighting Selections
Selecting my exterior lighting seemed to be a much simpler proposition than my interior lighting.
I needed to replace the existing front, back, and garage door lights.
I wanted the same model light for all three locations to make my home’s exterior more cohesive. The light had to be available in multiple sizes to fit all three placement scenarios.
I wanted LED lights because I intended to leave them on 24 x 7 for safety and I wanted them to last a long time.
The current light placement called for a barn light style that threw a pool of light downward and out.
I also wanted the lights to be silver or chrome to match my exterior door hardware.
In addition to the above, I wanted postmodern style lights, but I was willing to compromise there to meet my other criteria.
It took less than an hour to find and buy my interior lighting, but it took me four hours to find exterior lighting that met my criteria, and I had to make concessions on style.
Why? Simple. There aren’t many barn lights designed in a postmodern style in the finish and price range I wanted.
Sometimes you just have to compromise.
Eventually, here’s what I selected:
The good news is that, while my new exterior lights were not postmodern in style, I fell in love with them when they were installed. They fit the house and each shed a pool of warm light exactly where I needed it in order to feel safer at night.
Football watched, lighting selected and purchased, and orders confirmed, I headed to bed. Tomorrow I had meetings with the Mold Guy and the Landscape Guy to get estimates. If I had time, I would swing by Lowes to get the bathroom light.
The day after tomorrow was closing, and my reno adventure would really begin.
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I meet The Mold Guy at the house—the Landscape Guy is a no-show.
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