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Lighting Design Houston
Ars Gratia Artis
We genuinely understand why the film company MGM (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer) chose the above Latinized expression to represent their company. Except for the occasional amazingly talented elephant, Art, for its own sake, is unknown in the animal kingdom, except for humans.
Yes, you might make a good case for the Bowerbird or the Pufferfish as artists, or stunningly competent architects. You might
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Those energy-eaters must go!
We’ve talked before about the beautiful antebellum homes of Texas, originally lit by candles, gaslight, or oil lamps. The masterful details of tall columns, plenty of windows, orchards, or huge, ancient trees still exist here and there, but mostly we live in smaller, more energy efficient, and much lower maintenance style homes nowadays.
Yet we haven’t left behind the idea of beauty; o
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Installing safely, beautifully, and up to code!
North America is weird in that we unnecessarily use the most dangerous lightbulb sockets in the world. When lightbulbs were first invented they had two wires sticking out the bottom that were connected to screw terminals. This was necessary to provide the electricity they needed to work, but it was also very inconvenient when it came time to change the lightbulb—and t
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…and it is beautiful!
Your home is unique and deserves individual attention to showcase your personality and taste. Even in a row of identical houses, once you enter, each space is different.
One home might possess a Spartan look to minimize distractions; another could be chock-full of overstuffed furniture and wing-backed armchairs. It may have dark burgundy walls with expensive oil paintings hung in gilded f
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Making the right choice
LED lights give you full brightness as soon as you turn them on, just like the familiar filament, or incandescent bulb, that we have had since the late 1800s. The same cannot be said for CFL (Compact Fluorescent) bulbs, which in some cases can take more than one minute to warm up and provide full brightness.
Bulb filaments are actually weakened by thermal expansion and contraction when you
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Be afraid…be very afraid
There is a whole collection of unscrupulous pseudo-lighting “experts” out there in the world that would love to take your money. Most of the electrician-folks that you meet have the best of intentions; they’ve often been in business for years; they have a legitimate business address; their desire is to provide top-rated service that is fully-compliant with the Electrical Code. Some of our bes
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“Flow” is the key to success
At Illuminations Lighting Design we specialize in whole house batch LED lighting upgrades and replacements to achieve the desired results. While we can certainly handle any electrical lighting job, there are distinct advantages to doing the whole job at once…
Transitions
Almost everybody has had an opportunity to see a planetarium—it’s a stunning adventure—but one thing which is consist
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Gone in the blink of an eye
Flickering lights can cause dizziness, nausea, headaches, and in some extreme cases, seizures. It works subconsciously, so you often can’t even identify the reason it is happening.
In the bad old days, when computer monitors were first invented, they were little more than very basic television screens. They had low “refresh rates” meaning that the picture wasn’t redrawn very quickly. If
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You can live with it, but can you live with it?
There are surprisingly few ways of designing lighting perfectly. Unfortunately, the possibilities for doing a bad job are almost infinite. It doesn’t seem fair, but those are the facts.
One of the clearest signs of imminent disaster is when someone says: “Heyyyy… You know what would look good over there…?” Much as we would like to equate spontaneousness and creativit
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Light temperature is not about heat
Because Kelvin degrees do not use the little degree symbol (°) like we do with 0° C and 32° F, people sometimes get confused. In science, Kelvin is usually used to measure temperature, but when we use it to measure the color of light, it is not the temperature of the lightbulb itself, but how hot something would have to be to make it glow that color by heat alone.
It is an ex
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To boldly go where millions have gone before?
LED technology has already proven itself. It is an established fact that it can be as much as 90% more efficient than the filament-based lighting which was invented in the late 1800s.
It is versatile, beyond what most other lighting styles can accomplish. It is like a panacea for every lighting problem—it might be shorter to create a list of things that LED lighting c
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They are NOT all the same
Right off the top, let’s get this out of the way: LED selection and Dimmer-compatibility should not be undertaken by amateurs. That is the road to frustration, poor functionality, and massive disappointment.
LED bulbs are not like standard, power-hungry filament bulbs. You may see claims on the retrofit bulbs stating that they will work with a conventional dimmer switch—but if they work,
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Henry Ford didn't build the first car; Thomas Alva Edison didn't build the first light bulb. What the pair did have common was taking previously dubious products and turning them into everyday items for ordinary people.
Gas-guzzling monsters have been replaced by energy-sipping Prius and Tesla-type cars. The old-fashioned incandescent bulb, which turned 10% of its energy into usable light and 90% into wasted h
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