Having spent a couple of days writing lengthy articles on Feng Shui, or what I would term, natural or aesthetic design, I was delighted to stumble across a couple of interesting looking blogs. The first, the green blog on greenandsave.com was the one to alert me to this very interesting blog that’s well worth a browse: simplesteps.org, and particularly, I loved their article on No Bulb – Best Bulb!
Extend Natural Light with Mirrors
This No Bulb – Best Bulb article particularly caught my attention through their suggestion of using mirrors that of course naturally allow light to bounce around all over the place. With feng shui, mirrors have always been regarded highly and efficacious for all the various aspects of one’s home and well-being. In these articles that I wrote, I was drawing attention to the placement of mirrors within the family section of the home or room that you are developing or designing. It’s obvious that the placement of mirrors can be planned to allow natural light from windows to be reflected in two less well lit corners. And of course this clearly applies to whatever electrical lighting you have installed.
Task Lighting – Another Energy Saver
I don’t want to crib their article but another good section was there a discussion on the placement of different lights for different purposes. Again if you had one main light to flood the room for all purposes you may be wasting a lot of energy. The alternative is to establishing a variety of different small sources of light for specific purposes. Halogen bulbs would be useful for directing lights to specific areas, for working or hobbies. LEDs would also be an excellent choice for wherever is suitable. Of course we’re talking about a slightly higher outlay, but this should soon be recouped by the energy saving.
Anyway, do please have a quick look at their article.
Filed under lighting by on Apr 19th, 2010. Comment. 
I’m sure we all know the addictive qualities of sites like YouTube – I came across a couple that piqued my interest. The first was a revolving mini chandelier which just struck me as very unusual. I couldn’t really make out the design clearly at first so that got me putting in the effort to look in to it more closely. It certainly makes for a very interesting feature in any household.
The designer describes the actual lampshades is being propeller like that are balanced on top of the steel tip. The circular motion is generated through the updraught of hot air from the halogen lights that are used. So the whole structure must be actually quite flimsy or at least very light for there to be so much motion from the hot air convection.
There are three halogen lights, each on their own branch, each having one small revolving, see-through lampshade making the three inner shades. Then the whole of the three armed chandelier has an outer lampshade which also revolves from the combined heat of the three bulbs. So you end up with four revolving shades all constructed of a diaphanous see-through, obviously lightweight, plastic I would have imagined. Worth clicking on the video.
Halogen lights eco-friendly or not?
The designer was commenting that he needed to use halogen lights to create sufficient heat for the revolving motion. However he suspects that the halogen bulb may soon be banned for its excessive use of energy. Certainly halogen bulbs do get very hot but they also provide a reasonably efficient amount of light per unit energy since they normally run at a lower voltage and power rating then the traditional incandescent bulbs which are being phased out. They also have the advantage of being constructed of less toxic substances than CFLs, which as I recently mentioned in a recent post, use mercury within their lighting process and construction. I suspect that halogen lights will be around for some years to come.
Turbine Power in Creative Eco-Designs
I would like to see designers incorporating the use of wind power to make a self-lighting chandelier of this revolving kind. (As I thought of that, it I also brought to mind the old ‘mad’ scientists’ futile attempts to create perpetual motion machines.)
Now that sounds like a project worth investigating! Anyone up for it?
Filed under mini chandelier by on Apr 2nd, 2010. Comment.
