Lighting Preliminaries

      Lighting has been taking precedence over all other aspects of our project recently...  We started out leafing through four enormous catalogs by Koizumi, Panasonic, Odelic and Daiko.   We also went through Endo Lighting's Online Catalog. 

     With the seemingly endless varieties of styles and types of lighting, it's hard to know what to choose for what part of the house.  Saving us from the agony of figuring this out, our architect drew up a tentative plan detailing the type and location of lighting throughout the house.   He also offered the following rough guide, based on earlier discussions about our preferences:

-  Dining Room: Pendant light for the Dining table and Bracket Lights for the room
-  Living Room: Down lights for the room, some bracket lights for decoration
-  Kitchen: Down lights for work space
-  Studio: Some Down lights for working
-  Hall: Bracket lights
-  Bedrooms: Down lights and Bracket lights for reading
-  Loft: Bracket lights

      We knew we wanted pendant lighting for the dining room and bracket lights for the hallways, so we headed on over to Koizumi Lighting Showroom near Akihabara last weekend with the hope of finding something we liked.  It's a good thing this showroom is also open on Saturdays - not the case with all showrooms... 

  We walked into Koizumi's modern building and at reception we received a remote control and a drink ticket.  Great customer service! As we made it through the 2 large floors of lighting, we realised that the impression we got from the catalog was quite different from the real thing.  It is really a good idea to go and see the lights before making any choices.

       We didn't ask for a Personal Assistant, as we simply wanted to walk around trying out the various lights we wanted to test.  It took us a while to figure out that there was a sensor in each light section that served to activate the remote control.  Cool!  And while we were unable to confirm any choices there, we are keeping a few models in mind.

     We later went to Endo Lighting in Aoyama as we were interested in three models on their catalog.  Endo has some pretty nice and unusual models, but price-wise it is a bit more expensive than its competitors.  

    

      As it turned out, we were in for a major disappointment as none of the models we wanted to see were on display at the showroom...  So how are we supposed to choose?  This is one area I do not want to choose blindly, so we will have to continue looking until we find lighting that pleases us.

      Now we need to leaf through our catalogs more attentively and to intensify our Internet searches.  We'll post later on our findings, as we are just getting started!   And just a quick note about pricing.  Our architect mentioned that on average lighting would be about 50% of gross price.  The discount might be greater over the Internet depending on the brand, so it pays to check models carefully.