Annie Josey | Pegasus Lighting Blog

Spooky Lighting In Minutes

October 4, 2013October 4, 2013 Annie Josey 3 Comments

Halloween is less than one month away! If you’re thinking of decorating your home for the holiday, nothing can help turn your house into a festive sight like lighting. In minutes, you can turn your quaint cottage a ghoulish green, make your bungalow glow orange, or paint your front lawn an eerie yellow. Suddenly, your charming home becomes mysterious and thrilling to trick-or-treaters and passersby.

An impressive Halloween lighting design doesn’t take much time or effort to execute. It can even incorporate the outdoor lights you already use like up lights, outdoor recessed lights, spotlights, or floodlights. You just have to change the color by adding colored light filters in green, yellow, orange, and even blue – iconic Halloween colors. The colored light will work well on its own or as a backdrop for a more elaborate design:

Green light can turn your home into an over-the-top laboratory, bringing to mind bubbling viles and fluorescent beakers – you’ll half expect a mad scientist to pop out from behind the bushes with a monster of his own creation trailing close behind. Read More

Pegasus Lighting Roundup: Lighting in September

September 30, 2013September 30, 2013 Annie Josey

September has been another eventful month in the lighting industry. In this post, we’re covering new energy breakthroughs, new ideas about lighting design, and of course, more crazy, creative projects. Come take a gander…

In Lighting News…

“Boston: the Top City for Energy Efficiency”

According to a report done by the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy, Boston is the most energy-efficient city in the US. This report compared 34 major cities in the country, and Boston came out on top due to its commitment to many different sustainable initiatives, and ambitious energy-saving goals. Read more…

“This Funky-Looking LED Bulb Could be the Future of Lighting”

LED light bulbs are made from clusters of small diodes, meaning they aren’t limited to the traditional light bulb shape like older light sources. LED light bulbs can look like anything. Andy Turudic of NliteN has designed a unique LED light bulb that uses 80% less energy than an incandescent light, and will be much less expensive. What makes it so special? This light bulb is flat. Read more…

“Commemorative LED Baseball to Honor Mariano Rivera Could Also Help Yankees Closer’s Charitable Foundation”

If you’re a fan of Yankee closer Mariano Rivera, you can now get a super-cool LED baseball that features his signature, his career stats, and the number 42. Rivera hopes his unique baseball will help generate proceeds for his charitable foundation. Read more… Read More

How To Buy LED Light Bulbs (When You’re Used To Fluorescent)

September 25, 2013September 25, 2013 Annie Josey

LED Light Bars Showcase Fluorescent light bulbs are all the rage. Today, the majority of households in the U.S. have begun to adapt their lighting, exchanging inefficient incandescent light bulbs for energy-saving compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs). These familiar spiral-shaped light bulbs hide under our lamp shades, within our ceiling lights, behind our wall sconces, and are quite pleasant to use. Often, you can’t even tell the difference between a classic incandescent and a CFL.

As incandescent lights become a thing of the past, and energy efficient lighting becomes more of a priority, the fluorescent lights have gained popularity.

Fluorescent lights use much less energy to produce the same light output as any incandescent lamp, and they last many times longer. Plus, improvements in fluorescent lighting technology have turned these lamps into a pleasant source to have around your home or work space. The cost upfront isn’t terribly more than an incandescent, either.

Presently, cost and technology make fluorescent lights and LEDs (light emitting diodes) rivals in the energy efficient lighting market. But it won’t stay that way for long. Lighting experts say that while fluorescent lighting technology has reached its peak, LEDs are still evolving and improving. Even now, manufacturers are coming out with new LED lights that surpass fluorescent technology in many different ways.

Let’s examine how fluorescent light bulbs compare with today’s LED light bulbs:

Efficiency: While both light sources are considered efficient, LED lights have pulled ahead. A CFL produces 30-50 lumens or light per watt, while an LED on the market today can produce 60-100+ lumens per watt.

Rated Life: LEDs and fluorescent lights also both have long rated lives, but again, LEDs win. A CFL can last between 6,000 and 15,000 hours. An LED can last between 25,000 and 60,000 hours.

Mercury: Fluorescent lights contain mercury, and LEDs don’t. While operating fluorescent lights on a daily basis won’t put you in danger, a broken light bulb will expose you to a small amount of this toxic substance.

Infrared and UV: LED light bulbs don’t emit infrared or UV radiation in the same direction they emit light, but fluorescent lights do. Thus, LEDs will not damage sensitive material, and they won’t attract bugs. Read More

Buying LED Light Bulbs (When You’re Used To Halogen)

September 20, 2013September 25, 2013 Annie Josey

LED Picture Light With LEDs, you have so many possibilities. Earlier this week, we published a post about replacing old incandescent light bulbs with LEDs. But, LED light bulbs are much more versatile than that. Their innovative construction makes them great replacements for almost any kind of light bulb.

In this post, we’ll cover how LEDs can replace halogen light bulbs.

A halogen light bulb is an incandescent light bulb filled with a halogen gas. This gas within the light bulb’s envelope helps the light last longer and use less energy to produce light. There are certainly good reasons to use halogen light bulbs, but these lights also have their shortcomings.

Before we get into how to replace halogen light bulbs with LEDs, we need to understand the pros and cons of using halogen lights:

Halogen Pros:

Color Temperature: Halogen lamps emit crisp, flattering light, only slightly cooler than a regular incandescent’s color temperature. The added blue and green tones make a halogen light bulb appear whiter and brighter than the average incandescent.
Rated Life: These lights last longer than incandescent light bulbs. A halogen light’s rated life can range from 8,000-20,000 hours, while an incandescent usually lasts around 1,000-2,000 hours.
Efficiency: They’re more efficient than regular incandescent light bulbs, generating about 10-35 lumens per watt, compared to about 8-24 lumens per watt.
Color Rendering: Halogen lights have a CRI of 100, which means they render colors perfectly. This makes them great for display lighting, accent lighting, and more.
Dimming: These lamps still generate light with a filament, so you can use them with standard dimmer switches.

Halogen Cons: Read More

Buying LED Light Bulbs (When You’re Used To Incandescent)

September 17, 2013September 25, 2013 Annie Josey 3 Comments

LED Light Bulbs There’s nothing quite like the glow of an incandescent light bulb. It’s warm. It’s flattering. It’s familiar.

When you buy an incandescent light bulb, you know what to look for. You know how bright the light will be by looking at its wattage. You know what shape and size to get. You know any incandescent light will work with your dimmer switch.

Incandescent lights are easy. But if you’re still using them in every light socket, things are about to get real. As part of the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 (EISA), incandescent light bulbs are slowly being taken off the market. In an effort to conserve energy, consumers are encouraged to use more efficient, longer-lasting light bulbs like CFLs and LEDs.

Long story short: You might have to give up your beloved incandescent lights.

While this change might seem daunting at first, can be a great opportunity to save money on energy bills and light bulb replacements.

But what about that incandescent glow? Or those familiar features? Are they gone forever?

Thankfully, no. After years of research and testing, manufacturers have finally found a way to make LED light bulbs that mimic incandescent light bulbs to near perfection. If you’re looking to replace your filament light bulb with an LED, here’s what you need to look for:

1. For that warm, inviting glow, you need an LED with a warm color temperature. An incandescent’s color temperature is normally around 2,800 degrees K. Read More

5 Questions To Ask Before Your Next Lighting Project

September 13, 2013September 25, 2013 Annie Josey

Stock-Photo-Lamp Whether your room is bright or moody, big or small, top-of-the-line or thrift-store-chic, the wrong lighting will make it look bad. Your lighting scheme has the power to accent your favorite colors and shapes, to make your room functional and lovely. But the wrong lighting can ruin an otherwise beautiful room – distorting colors and creating unflattering shadows.

You can avoid these problems with a little extra planning and some know-how. You just have to understand what questions to ask.

Here are 5 things to think about before you create a new lighting scheme for your space:

1. Will these lights compliment my lifestyle?

If a space is uncomfortable, you’re not going to want to stick around there for long. One of the biggest mistakes people make when installing lights is not having a clear idea of how they’ll use the space.

If you plan on taking daily soaks in your bathtub, you don’t want recessed lights shining directly down into your eyes. If you like to cook elaborate meals in the kitchen, you don’t want your work space engulfed in shadow. If you want your living room to be a game room, a romantic hideout, and a place to read all in one, you don’t want lights that operate at only one brightness level.

How are you planning to use your space? Let’s work from there…

2. Will these lights match my color scheme?

You can put a ton of time and effort into decorating your room just right, but when you add the wrong lights, all that isn’t worth a hill of beans.

Always pay special attention to the color temperature of your lights. It should flatter your color scheme, and you shouldn’t use lights with contrasting color temperatures in the same space. That can be jarring.

As a general rule, use lights with a warm color temperature (below 3,200K) with warm colors (reds, pinks, yellows), and lights with a cool color temperature (above 4,000K) with cool colors (blues, greens, whites). Using a cool light with a warm color can make it look washed out, while using a warm light with a cool color can make it look a little…wilted.

3. Will I have layers of light?

Ask any lighting designer what they think the first rule of lighting design is and they’ll tell you this: layer your lights. A single ceiling can never provide enough light for an entire room, not to mention it’s visually lame.

You should have at least 3 different light layers in your room: ambient lighting, task lighting, and accent lighting. In a living room, this might include recessed lights for overhead lighting, table lights or reading lights for task lighting, and tape lights lining certain architectural features for accent lighting. In a kitchen, this might mean you use track lighting on the ceiling for ambient light, under cabinet lights for task lighting, and a few picture lights to accent some artwork.

The key is to create points of visual interest, and diminish shadows. After all, this isn’t an old dungeon we’re talking about – it’s your house! Read More