When working on your whole home remodel, our team of professional designers guides you through an array of choices to express your personal style and meet required functionality. Here we illuminate some of the choices we present for lighting, one of the most influential decisions in designing a space.

Types of Lighting

Halogen
Halogens are made of a much stronger glass than that used for standard incandescent light bulbs. They provide bright illumination and can be an efficient way to light a large area. Halogens are available in a variety of light spreads, including wide flood, narrow flood, and spot light.

Low Voltage Bulbs
Low voltage light bulbs are the most expensive on the market, but have a longer life expectancy than incandescent. They use less energy than other bulbs but must be used with a light fixture that has a transformer that lowers the 120V to 12V.

LED
LED light is similar to a 65-watt BR30 bulb while using only 14 watts of energy at 3000 Kelvin, producing a warm white light. The low wattage combined with an average lifespan of 50,000 hours provides energy savings year after year. Dimmer styles are available.

Energy efficiency is not only desirable for environmental reasons, it’s also the law in California. Title 24 requires that over 50% of the light in a kitchen must be energy efficient lighting.

Lighting Trim
Every detail matters when designing your whole home remodel. Once you begin to explore the options, you may be amazed by how much difference a detail like lighting trim can make in a room’s appearance.

Baffle Cone Trim
Baffle Cone Trim is the most cost-effective trim and typically comes in a white color to match a standard white ceiling. Baffle Trims have “grooves” on the trim surface and interior, which reduce the reflectivity of light and are more visually appealing. They usually come in black because the black is better at absorbing light, but are also available in white.

Reflector or Alzak Trim
Reflector or Alzak Trims have a white trim ring and a metallic black, gold, silver or haze interior reflector. These reflectors are capable of producing dramatic highlights. The trim features a highly reflective surface around the light bulb. This option works well for minimizing glare and is also quite effective at projecting light outward. It is an ideal trim for lighting large areas. Another benefit is that the light source in the ceiling is less noticeable, distracting less from the overall beauty of your space.

Lighting choices are essential to the overall aesthetics of your whole home remodel. Our expert team guides you toward the most functional and inspiring selections for your home.

One of the interesting current trends our professional design team has noticed is an appreciation for rustic elements balanced with modern aesthetics. Authentic natural materials bring a sense of continuity and character to a home, particularly in an era when machine-made production and planned obsolescence prevail. When planning a whole home remodel or kitchen remodel, we’ve found that wood slab tables and other wood slab furniture are a practical and engaging way for clients to express their enthusiasm for rustic design.

Inspired by George Nakashima of the American Arts and Crafts Movement, Gustav Stickley, Charles and Henry Greene, and Frank Lloyd Wright, Woodland Ventures in Boise, Idaho creates wood slab furniture as functional works of art. The company’s goal is to give trees a second life as objects of artistic beauty, rather than seeing them burned, chipped, or dumped in a landfill. Their process for creating wood slab furniture is complex and well-considered, with a deep respect for nature:

Tree & Log Selection
Domestic hardwood logs are acquired from professional arborists and tree services. The trees are mainly harvested from urban areas because of weather damage or safety concerns related to the tree’s maturity and eventual decay. The selection process focuses on the striking individual characteristics of each tree, such as giant logs with large limbs, knots, burls, or multiple trunks, that will result in an extraordinary piece of furniture with spectacular figuring or rare graining patterns.

Milling
Because different sawing methods have an effect on grain patterns, each log is carefully analyzed prior to sawing. Thickness, direction of the cut, and positioning of the log is determined in order to maximize the inherent beauty of each log’s figure and graining. Woodland Ventures has a mill capable of sawing up to 70 inch diameter logs, which produce truly exceptional, one-of-a-kind pieces.

Wood slab furniture adds natural charm and visual serenity to your environment. Working with a team of professional interior designers for your whole home remodel, this is just one of the ideas you can explore to express your personal style.