Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: lighting for Common House

[Sharon Villines (sharon]

On Apr 7, 2006, at 1:54 PM, Karen Scheer wrote:

> Hello,
> As we research lighting choices for our common house, which will have 
> a vaulted ceiling, our building committee has asked for feedback from 
> this list.
>
> What kinds of lighting solutions do you use in vaulted ceiling common 
> houses?  What you like or dislike about them?

We have lights that hang 2-3 feet below a two storey ceiling. I think I 
can safely say we hate them. They are impossible to clean (we have to 
rent or buy scaffolding) and are much too bright. We generally turn on 
half of them at one time and it is still too bright for intimate 
dinners, etc. They have some sort of energy efficient mechanism that 
means we can't dim them.

We have 3(?) sconces that give much nicer lighting and a few more would 
be good but the cost of putting them has not made it to a priority 
list.

The bright lights (with some way to clean them and replace bulbs) are 
nice to have but combined with sconces would be much better.

Sharon
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Sharon Villines
Takoma Village Cohousing, Washington DC
http://www.takomavillage.org