The Modern Nursery

Lighting  Illuminate your baby's nursery room with these modern nursery lamps.

Andreu Oaika's rechargeable Candeloo lights bring non-Disneyfied character to the nursery and shine gently for up to eight hours — perfect for those wee-hour diaper changes. $49, from PiccoliniOnline.com.

Very egg-citing

Star light, star bright. Turn your baby's room into miniature planetarium with J Schatz's Star Egg Nightlight. Tiny holes in the ceramic egg's shell create a celestial lightshow on the surrounding walls and ceiling so your little one can sleep under the stars. $125, from Sparkability.net.

Heck of a neck

Kitchen Lighting

Brilliance on a Budget  Adding quality lighting to your kitchen doesn't have to involve big, expensive fixtures or exhaustive remodeling, as long as you think carefully about what you want to accomplish and then use a little creativity.

Use Fixtures That Perform Multiple Functions
"I'm a big believer in using the 'layers' technique for designing kitchen lighting," says Frankie Cameron, account manager for BellacorPro.com, a lighting retailer based in Mendota Heights, Minn. These four layers, Frankie says, represent the functions that lighting performs in the kitchen:

The ambient layer: The general overhead lighting in a room.
The task layer: "Ambient lighting often doesn't provide enough lighting for specific tasks you want to perform," Frankie says, "so you have under-cabinet lighting, for example, or a light over the sink or over an island."
The focal layer: Used to highlight objects such as pieces of art, architectural details, etc.
The decorative layer: This layer is used purely for fun. It's "meant to enhance the overall interior design," Frankie says.

Your best bet for budget lighting is to try to find pieces that perform several of those functions at once. Richard Landon, owner of RL Design LLC in Bellevue, Wash., and winner of Best Overall Kitchen in the National Kitchen & Bath Association's annual design competition, did this in his own home by combining ambient, focal and decorative lighting in one smart fixture.

"I bought an interesting, S-shaped 4-foot-long fixture from IKEA," Richard says. "I took out the ugly pendant lighting over my dining room table and put in this really long, curvy thing where I could aim individual lights at the walls in different directions. That would work in the kitchen, too. If you have a single fixture in the middle of the ceiling, go buy a light that's very interesting and eclectic from a budget place where you get good quality for a low price."

Richard particularly likes monorail lighting, which is a stylish modern twist on traditional track lighting that allows you attach different individual lights to one long, curving track. The track is suspended from a single point on the ceiling and its curve can often be manipulated to suit your space. "If you hunt around you can find less expensive ones," he says. "My dining-room fixture is similar to this (see photo), and I bought it for $49."

Lighting a Room the Right Way

Lighting Placement

When you design lighting for a room you have to consider what activities you're going to engage in in that space. The types of activities will influence your choice of fixtures and placement. Most rooms serve more than one function. Lighting must be considered when highlighting certain room elements. Design by Andreas Charalambous.

Recessed Lighting

Recessed lighting is a good choice for a living room. Consider placing above a sofa, coffee table or chairs. Design by Velvet Hammerschmidt.

Expand Indoor Lighting Options

Now that strings of indoor lights burn cool instead of hot and many of them work through battery power, there are all sorts of places they can be draped and placed without thinking twice about them:

• Imagine the impact of several sets of trunk lights spread over the dining table. Cover them with sheer fabric that's draped, bunched and flowing to add depth. A centerpiece of tall candlesticks, beaded ribbon and ornaments finishes off this table with a twist.
  
• Another great place to add sparkle that will also translate to the outside of your home is window coverings made out of light. A combination of frosty round snowball lights, opalescent and beaded garlands, large snowflake ornaments and crystals turn a chilly winter view into a window to a fantasy world. The addition of sheer fabrics and ribbon can help hide the electrical cords and soften the overall effect.
  
• Brighten an empty console with strings of lights attached to foam balls with moss hot glued over the top to diffuse the bulbs. These look great grouped in urns.
  
• Make a shimmering room divider with glowing strings of lights for drama in a doorway. Cut a slot into a PVC pipe using a table saw and place a shower tension rod inside it. Slip the light strands into the slot and plug them into each other. Once it's up, pull the light strands back like a formal drape and hold them in place with ribbon.
  
• When building a home, have candle outlets installed right in the window sills so that sill lights can be used all year round for a welcoming touch.

Easy Under-Cabinet Kitchen Lighting

Highlight beautiful countertops and brighten dark spaces by adding under-cabinet lighting to your kitchen. With these simple, step-by-step instructions, anyone can install under-cabinet lighting without an electrician.

Materials Needed:

• 1 - 8" xenon under-cabinet light (Utilitech) for every 16" to 24" of cabinets
• safety glasses
• Phillips screwdriver
• drill or screw gun

• 1/2" drill bit and 1/16" drill bit
• outlet within 6' of lighting location
• UL-listed cable staples

Plan Location and Spacing

Lay out lights on countertop, directly under the intended installation location, spacing lights less than 13 inches apart. Link lights using included quick-connect cords, but don't plug lights in at this stage. Adjust lights so last light is within six feet of outlet to ensure power cord can reach outlet. Tip: Newer homes likely have power outlets on switches located within cabinet interior. Inspect the interior of kitchen wall cabinets. If cabinets have a cabinet lighting outlet, drill holes with the 1/2-inch drill bit in the cabinet shelves from the outlet location to the base of the cabinet.

Install Lights

Lights used in this tutorial come with a mounting template and mounting hardware. Place mounting template in the intended location of each light and mark screw-hole locations. Allow enough room around the light for cords to be easily plugged in. To effectively hide cords, mount lights toward the front edge of cabinets. Drill a pilot hole with 1/16-inch drill bit, 5/8-inches deep. Insert mounting screws and tighten with the Phillips screwdriver, leaving 1/8-inch of the screw thread exposed. Slide lights onto exposed screws and lock in place. Repeat until all lights have been installed. Tip: Lighting system should be hidden from line of sight. If cabinets do not conceal the under-cabinet lighting system, a wood light rail can be easily added to the cabinets to both add beauty to the cabinets and conceal the wiring.

Mount Cords

Connect the last light to the second-to-last light with quick-connect cord. Screw down cable staples to secure cables to underside of cabinet. Keep the cables on the front edge of the cabinet to conceal wires from line of sight. Continue connecting quick-connect cords and using cable staples until all lights are connected, but don't plug the lights in yet. Tip: For installations plugged into countertop outlets, install wall cord covers to conceal exposed wires.

Water and Lighting in a Greenhouse

Water and light are essential to plants, and in a greenhouse you'll have to provide both. There are several different watering methods to choose from: hand watering, capillary mats that bring water up from below, overhead watering, and drip irrigation that delivers water directly into each pot.
Greenhouse expert Scott Naegeli says a drip irrigation system is easy to lay out and is very cost-effective. It delivers small amounts of water over long periods of time, so plants stay uniformly moist. Installation is fairly simple:

• Be sure the mainline that carries water into the greenhouse is sunk underground at least four feet, which is below the frost line, to make sure the water in the line doesn't freeze.
  
• Use a 3/4-inch poly pipe as the water supply line. Position it to run down the length of the bench.
  
• From the main line, connect lateral lines to run between pots.
  
• Set the system on a timer to ensure regular watering.

Once the water system is in place, you'll need to address any lighting needs. Although fluorescent lights are popular, they help the gardener more than the plants. This type of lighting is good to work by, but plants need more light, especially in northern regions.
A high-pressure sodium bulb does a better job of simulating sunlight to stimulate plant growth. A 125-watt bulb gives off plenty of light when hung at least three feet above plants or seeds. This is a good distance to avoid heat burn.
Grow lights help to lighten shady spots and propagation areas in the greenhouse. What you are germinating or propagating determines how long you need to leave the lights on, usually an average of 12 to 16 hours each day. If you are growing tropical plants, you may need to set up grow lights if the plants don't get at least eight hours of sun each day.

How to Choose the Best Indoor Lighting for Plants

It can be difficult to provide enough light to your houseplants due to seasonal changes or lack of window space. Whether it's for your full-grown houseplants or starter seedlings, check out these ideas for indoor lighting.

Incandescent Lights

Incandescent lights are good for lighting up a room or growing low-light houseplants, such as vines, ferns or dracaenas. They have limited utility for growing plants with higher light requirements. These lights put out only about 10 percent of their energy as light while 90 percent is heat. So, unless you want to cook your plants, they aren't ideal for light-loving plants like many tropicals, cacti or succulents.

Fluorescent Lights

Fluorescent lights are ideal for plants with low to medium light requirements, like African violets. They are also good for starting vegetables indoors. These lights typically come in long, tubelike bulbs in a range of sizes including T5, T8 and T12.
The narrower the bulb, the more efficient and brighter it is, due to the smaller surface area. In addition to this, fluorescent bulbs use 75 percent less energy than incandescent lights. So, for example, a 25-watt fluorescent emits about as much light as a 100-watt incandescent light bulb. T5 systems put out about double the amount of light per tube as standard fluorescent lights. They are 6500 Kelvin and also full spectrum, which is very intense light.
Kelvin is a basic unit of color temperature used to measure the whiteness of a light's output; it's the degree of visual warmth or coolness of a light source. So the higher the degree of Kelvin, the bluer, or "cool," the lamp appears. The lower the degree of Kelvin, the redder, or "warm," it appears.
When growing most houseplants, use light bulbs between 4000 and 6000 Kelvin, as the bulb's color temperature will borrow from a full spectrum of colors — cools and warms. With these lights, you can actually mimic the growth you would get in a greenhouse or outdoors. Culinary herbs, greens and starter plants can be grown year-round with them. Houseplants that need lots of light, like cattleya orchids, succulents and carnivorous plants, also perform much better under these full-spectrum lights. With starter plants and seedlings, place the T8 or T5 bulbs two to four inches from the plants to mimic the sun. For established plants, including herbs or houseplants, place them a foot or two from the light source.

Compact Fluorescent Lights

Compact fluorescents are great for lighting indoor houseplants without having to use a full T5 system and for a fraction of the cost of incandescent lights. Wattage varies, so be sure to ask a specialist what will work best for you and your lighting needs. Carnivorous plants and phalaenopsis orchids do well under compact fluorescents.

Halides

Halides are generally used in larger spaces or on larger plants, as they cover more distance in terms of lighting. In most cases, you're not going to need a 1000-watt light. You can get by with a smaller halide or the T5 fluorescent system.
Remember, plants need darkness too. Although they can grow under continuous light, all plants prefer a dark period. Provide them with 12 to 18 hours of light per a day.