Energy-efficient light
04/09/2008 11:41 AM by Gretchen Schauffler
The right kind of light bulb makes the difference between light and death! Light affects our mood deeply. Living in the Northwest, with gray skies for most of the year, inspired me to create an alternate world of rich color so I could cocoon inside over the winter months. Your world of color, inside your home, should look like a great, big, piece of eye candy!
But when colors go sickly looking on you, due to bad lighting, they look like they have the stomach flu, and it will feel contagious, to you and everyone. As long as you have eyeballs, you have color chemistry happening, and, the sooner you accept color causes emotional reactions, even if you don’t want to react, the sooner you will want to run towards the light—the right kind of light.
Energy-efficient light—CFL fluorescent light bulbs—save energy, and money, and that’s what they do for you and the environment—but what they do for your home is another story. Unfortunately, energy-efficient light can, and will, emit a functional, utilitarian glow that drowns out color ranges and kills warmth. While they are a terrific eco-friendly solution, their technology, regarding color correction, is not quite there yet—but they are working on it. There are different kinds of energy-efficient CFL “color correction lights” or “full spectrum lights” that allow you to control part of the outcome. They range from warm whites, to full natural light, to some-what versions of incandescent. When you research energy-efficient CFL lights, find out what color correction lights are available in your particular model. I am not a lighting expert, so talk to lighting specialists in your area and find out more. Please share your information.
Meanwhile, I will do the only thing I do when I can’t control the weather, or now, light bulbs—create more alternate worlds of color. For the new “green world” we are coming out with a new palette of eco-friendly paint colors for Devinegreen™, our low-VOC paint line. Our 42 new green paint colors will be a fantastic solution to the color-limited world of green surfaces. Be looking for the new line, launching in September.
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Gretchen,
Good information—please continue to keep us informed. I will be connecting to my Hirshfield’s friends regarding the “Green” product line and the new palette.
I continue to specify Devine Color in nearly half of my in-home consultations. I call them “Devine Interventions”!!
Keeping in Touch…..
Stephen Ingerson
“The Color Consultants”
— Stephen Ingerson 04/11/2008 07:57 AM #
Hi Gretchen~ That’s great info-It’s true that the bulbs have such an effect on color, and while everyone is trying to be “green” these days, it does make it difficult when choosing colors. So happy to hear about your new colors coming out-love the line, as I’ve specified it for clients since it first came out
— Kelly DuByne 04/11/2008 08:08 AM #
Thank you so much for bringing this up! I’ve been grappling with this issue for a while. A large portion of my work is color consults (I’ve introduced many clients to Devine Color.) I’m in the PNW now, but will be returning to Coastal California soon, and am so excited to see how the Devine Colors will look in all that sunshine. I know that your eco and green products will be a huge hit there.
— Diana Hathaway Timmons 04/11/2008 09:52 AM #
Ms. Gretchen,
You’re brilliant with what you do, but please…have someone else edit your blogs before you post. The run-on sentences and inappropriate/excessive use of commas makes your writing almost painful to slog through. Your spot-on message becomes diluted in mediocre verbosity.
Now, onto the point of the blog. Excellent information. Everyone interested in new paint colors for their home should absolutely be aware of the drastic changes lighting can make on our choices. Particularly since we’re all so strongly encouraged to swap out our beloved yet frighteningly inefficient incandescent lighting in favor of more ecologically friendly (and ghastly harsh) CFL’s.
— Sarah 04/11/2008 11:34 AM #
Sarah, I know, I KNOW! I am so bad at grammar… I think it’s my
bilingual background…:) Bear with me you all. I write like I speak and I talk very fast, so I put commas everywhere..”just in case”. I do have someone who edits me, I may have forgotten this one….
Thanks so much for posting your comments!
g
— gretchen Schauffler 04/12/2008 12:04 PM #
Robert here – Gretchen’s proofreader and website developer. Thanks for that Sarah. Now I can really crack down on Gretchen! Heh heh! Too bad she likes it so much.
— Robert 04/12/2008 07:30 PM #
Thanks a lot for this Gretchen. This is something I’ve been dealing with a lot recently. Also some of my clients are starting to use LED recessed arrays as well which give off a nice sickly blue. This will be a great addition to the color line.
I have one suggestion. I love your paint, everyone I sell your paint to love’s your paint. I have several contractors that only use your new DevineGreen. However brand recognition is a problem. My sister in San Francisco just bought the last quarts that her local store had (they are discontinuing the line). When Benjamin Moore launched their new Aura Paint they used a word of mouth marketing organization called Bzzagent that was very successful in our area at getting the word out. Perhaps something like that would be helpful at informing the public of your amazing paint.
— Mike McNabb 04/21/2008 11:55 AM #