Home & Interior Design books:
Complete Lighting Design: A Practical Design Guide for Perfect Lighting (Quarry Book)

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Dreadful, useless, designed to intimidate -
I am sending this back. It's not a practical guide (as the title says) -- in fact it's the opposite. It's filled with ridiculous architectural photos of homes that are so over designed and frou-frou, there's not a SINGLE IDEA in the entire book that a normal person can use. My home is a HOME, not a museum or an architectural project. Instead of talking about the lighting, it notes for each design the brand name and model of particular high-end fixtures, as if it's trying to sell them. The whole book seems designed to convince me that lighting is some black art and that I'm doomed if I don't run out and hire a lighting designer professional. AWFUL. I can't believe anyone would write a positive review of this book.

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Basic Principles... Advanced Application -
While this book is less How-To and more Inspiration, it is a great book for both the home owner and the home planner. It focuses on basic lighting principles (which are useful for anyone trying to properly light their home) illustrated through advanced lighting applications (architectural elements and features incorporated during the planning, building, or renovating of a home).

It illustrates lighting techniques for each room in the home with emphasis on different areas of the room that require different kinds of lighting. Lighting for both day and night, and a special section on exteriors, are explored.

The examples and illustrations in this book are from homes where lighting design was considered in the initial construction, and money and resources were apparently not an object. While unattainable, they are inspirational.
For those of us who don't own our home, or cannot remodel (due to financial, zoning or other restrictions) this book provides some basic lighting principles that are still useful and applicable when lighting a home. In general, there are three levels of lighting to complete any room:
1. Ambient lighting-an indirect light that provides overall illumination
2. Task Lighting-focused light for work spaces (ie-kitchen counters, desk-tops, bedsides, reading chairs, etc.)
3. Accent lighting-any light used to draw attention to a featured object (art, sculpture, architectural elements)
Thought the examples are not really anything you could achieve in your own home, it gives you ideas on how to incorporate these types of lighting for both day and night, and interior and exterior.

The book title really says it all -
With this book, there is truth in advertising. I'm an architect and I do a lot of resdential design. I've found this book to be quite useful and would recommend it to archtects and contractors that build on spec.

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