As a lighting expert, I am fully aware of the myriad benefits of installing dimmers in your home. While energy conservation leads the pack in terms of benefits, dimmers also help prolong the life of light bulbs, add security and safety to your home and create ambience to set a mood. Thanks to the innovation of progressive lighting control companies, you can add fashion to the list of attributes. By Lucy Dearborn, Lucia Lighting & Design
Today’s discerning home owners are expressing their styles in a rainbow of colors. Whether adding a pop of color to wall coverings, floor decor, countertops or a lighting pendant, homeowners are coloring up their lives with their personal palates of fun hues like berry red, energetic orange, vintage yellow, mossy greens, terrific teals and coppery browns.
Now that controls are becoming commonplace in many homes, the fashion police finally caught up with the function peeps and have added color to their controls. I asked my good friend Bryan Biga, National Sales Manager – Lighting Showrooms for Lutron Electronics, to share his thoughts on dimmers and colors and here’s what he had to say:
Importance of Dimmers to Home Lighting
Even the best designed spaces can be quickly ruined by improper lighting. Making sure that the correct lighting sources are being used and that they illuminate each area of a space properly, can be the difference between average design and amazing design. As many lighting designers will agree, you cannot maximize the layers of lighting in your space unless you can control them. The fact is, we live in a world where we are constantly tweaking things around us to make the environment more comfortable, catering to an immediate activity or need. Our days are filled with volume controls, temperature controls and other adjustments to cater to what we want, when we want it. There is nothing that we use more on a regular basis throughout the day than lighting, and dimmers give us the opportunity to adjust it as we want it. Adjusting the layers of light in a space to make it more comfortable and allowing everything to look its best is only part of the value of dimming. When you start to add in the energy savings that comes with dimming all light sources and the lamp life extension that it adds to incandescent and halogen lamps, you quickly learn there is a large value package that comes with this $30 investment. In a time when people are looking for simple remodeling opportunities that add significant value to the space, while also being affordable, dimmers are the perfect solution for every room.
Dimmers and Devices in Colors
The world of residential design is made up of an enormous variety of colors and finishes allowing every area of a home to be developed with someone’s individual style. When someone is building a new home or doing a remodeling project, there really isn’t a detail that a designer or homeowner can’t adjust to make it exactly how they want it. Let’s take a look at a kitchen for instance. This space is one of the highest fashion spaces in a home today and the options are endless. The counter tops, back splashes, cabinetry, flooring, molding, lighting and appliances are just some of the important details that are taken into account when designing the perfect space. The reality is that there is a significant amount of time and money spent getting into the finest of details, but there is one category that keeps the room from being absolutely perfect, the electrical devices: all of those wonderful receptacles, switches, dimmers, phone jacks and face plates that we all know are necessary for our coffee makers, toasters and everyday devices that we can’t live without. So what do we do with these eye sores? Lutron brought the solution to every homeowner and designer looking for that finishing touch to every space.  The color selection gives opportunities to blend with neutral colors and stone finishes while offering high fashion colors like Hot red and Turquoise. The world of residential design has given us everything we need to make a room look the way we want.
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If you would like to learn more about lighting controls, I invite you to visit me at Lucia Lighting & Design at 311 Western Avenue in Lynn or call me at 781-595-0026.