Complete Lighting Design: A Practical Design Guide for Perfect Lighting (Quarry Book) [Paperback]

Marilyn Zelinsky (Author)

Book Description

Series: Quarry Book | Publication Date: July 1, 2006

No matter how beautifully decorated a room is, it doesn't matter if no one can see it. Interior designers know the importance of good lighting placement, because it is the key that can literally transform a home. Although correct lighting placement is this book's central theme, it goes much further to discuss everything from basic lighting principles and practices to new technologies, issues of energy efficiency, and new trends in computer automation, followed by a practical guide for analysis and planning, execution, and installation, offering creative solutions to a wide range of illumination issues.

While the information is oriented to a professional design audience, the practical information and advice is just as useful to do-it-yourselfers and homeowners who take on their own lighting projects.

Each topic includes a visual guide and the author even includes room-by-room lighting strategies. Full-color photographs of interiors and drawings illustrate detail and specifics of placements and design features.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Marilyn Zelinsky Syarto is one of the nation's leading experts on workplace design. The former senior editor of Interiors Magazine, she's written extensively on residential interior design. She's the author of New Workplaces for New Workstyles, Practical Home Office Solutions, and is contributing author for Corporate Interiors II, as well as The Inspired Workspace (Rockport). She lives in Fairfield, Connecticut.

Product Details

• Paperback: 176 pages
• Publisher: Quarry Books (July 1, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1592532470
• ISBN-13: 978-1592532476
• Product Dimensions: 10.9 x 8.5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #914,686 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #61 in Books > Crafts, Hobbies & Home > Interior Design > Lighting

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Basic Principles... Advanced Application, January 14, 2007

By 

S. Beck - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Complete Lighting Design: A Practical Design Guide for Perfect Lighting (Quarry Book) (Paperback)

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.

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The book title really says it all, January 6, 2007

By 

D. Vaughan - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Complete Lighting Design: A Practical Design Guide for Perfect Lighting (Quarry Book) (Paperback)

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.

1.0 out of 5 stars Dreadful, useless, designed to intimidate, September 23, 2008

By 

Kyrie Robinson "homeowner, consultant, mom" (Palo Alto, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Complete Lighting Design: A Practical Design Guide for Perfect Lighting (Quarry Book) (Paperback)

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.