Let There Be Light

There's something called the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon, where, when one learns, hears, or starts thinking about something new, suddenly it's everywhere. Lighting is my current obsession. I pay attention constantly, now that I'm considering which fixtures to buy and how they will look. On the face of it, it's not so complicated. Most of the new lighting in our house will be recessed, with some ceiling mounted lights and a few wall sconces. Perhaps it's because so many of the remaining options seem largely indistinguishable that it's hard to hone in on exactly what we want. Our thought was that we will choose mostly neutral lighting, but try for one piece in the dining room with a little extra oomph. To that end, I've been trawling online lighting stores at every opportunity and feverishly adding pictures to my houzz.com idea book when I can't sleep.

David and I watched The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo last night (the newer American version) after the kids went to bed. As I watched, I was distracted from the plot by the nifty lighting in all those Swedish buildings. So sleek! So modern and minimalist! My mind kept returning to those geometric unembellished fixtures- I must have them. The obvious next step was to venture to Ikea, done today (check), on a rainy Saturday no less. The waft of Swedish meatballs notwithstanding, results were a little disappointing. Maybe absent the muckraking journalist, mohawked antiheroine and Hollywood set designers, they were just regular inexpensive lights, only with names like umlaut and bergwenstrom.

perusing options at Ikea, above

In my online searching I did find one modern chandelier that was kind of interesting- round crystals forming a pyramid. David liked it too, but as he rightly pointed out,we could hardly host any future Passover seders with such an eggregious symbol of our oppression hanging over the table. Point well taken. The $2K + price tag didn't help much either.

We'll keep looking. Soon, everything will be illuminated.