Lighting can be fun, formal, and flattering. Experimenting with it is fun, too, but the secret often lies in simplicity. A single spotlight focused on a favourite picture is a simple idea, but can be more effective than a dozen badly placed standard lamps. Planning lighting carefully can give your home a new dimension. Because of the technicalities involved, many people tend to fight shy of making drastic changes to the lighting in their homes, preferring to leave it to the experts.
But traditional lighting in the home is usually conservative, and often inadequate. By exploiting the potential of the many different fitments that are readily available, you will be able to achieve both effect and efficiency in your lighting system-and without completely rewiring your home. Unless you are lucky enough to be in on the planning stage of building a new house, you will probably find that your home has been wired unimaginatively. Builders tend to be conventional and provide only the standard lighting points in the traditional positions-a centre ceiling light, two wall plugs per room, and perhaps a couple of wall light outlets on either side of a fireplace or in an alcove. It is all too easy to allow your choice of lighting to be moulded by what is there-and obvious rather than plan out exactly what each individual room needs.
After all, planning takes time and energy. But if you can find enough of these to bother, the rewards will be considerable. When choosing your lighting fitments, try to decide what you want before you go shopping. Department stores tend to be discouraging to new ideas. Their lighting departments are usually a blaze of fittings, all switched on at once, with tittle attempt to demonstrate individual effects. It is hard to visualize what a specific fitment will look like away from all the others in the shop and hanging in your home. Confused and unsure, one can so often end up with buying the same style fitment or lights as before, with the feeling that it is better to be sale than sorry.