Night Magic

Good lighting can change the look and feel of a room for a pittance — particularly at night. Find out how one designer lights up his exciting life.

(Continued from Page 1) By Mark McCauley
Special to HGTV.com
PHOTO

Task lighting, in this case for reading in a bedroom seating area, needn’t be utilitarian looking. The standing lamp in this John Robert Wiltgen design is a piece of art in itself.
Add drama
Now, want to cast a few shadows, create a little pattern where there is none? Buy a tallish plant, ala a ficus tree, and place a small canister light (looks like a coffee can, hence the name, and shines a light straight up. Retails at about $20) below it so that the light shines up through the leaves. Suddenly, what was once a boring, white, defunct ceiling is full of a spreading canopy of pattern from the leaves. (Now imagine if the light bulb is amber, see what I mean?). Stick one of these in a corner and you accomplish two goals: one, you have a textured ceiling, and two, you have eliminated a hard-edged corner in the space, rounding off the room, as it were.

Lighten up
Those darn bookshelves are darkening things up a bit, aren‘t they? Purchase some small hockey puck disc lights and slap them on the top of the bookcase shining upwards. They will brighten things up, up there, and give you a great area for adding color with artwork, pottery, you name it, atop the bookcases.

How do you disguise all of these light fixtures? Use your imagination. Most of these lighting sources are not particularly large; hide them behind plants, pull your sofa a bit off the wall and place a few of these between the wall and the sofa (Note: try to avoid halogen lights for treatments such as this, as they burn quite hot. Be sure halogens have plenty of room between them and any potential flammables).

Use pottery to cover some (or place the light source in the pottery, running the plug behind and out of sight), place them under end tables, behind chairs. Remember to bring the light sources out into the room, as opposed to having all your lighting lined up along the walls. But, most of all have fun, light up your life and you can create magical effects. Now excuse me, I have a piano bar to go to.

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Interior designer Mark McCauley, ASID, lives outside of Chicago and can be reached at colortherapy@aol.com.