Choosing The Right Lighting For Your Home and Offices
Lighting is a significant element in home and office interior designs. However, many do not seem to appreciate the importance of choosing the right lighting designs for their homes and offices.
Choosing the right lighting does not only create the right mood and ambiance at home. It also enhances the experience in the workplace, thereby improving productivity.
While choosing the right lighting is essential for home and offices, it is beneficial to be able to identify which is the best for specific purposes.
The art of lighting a home or an office has progressed significantly. Gone are the days when lighting is just about illuminating a dark room. These days it is more about creating a particular feel to the room as well as affecting the mood.
Mood lighting, for example, is used to create an atmosphere within a room. Mood lighting can dictate and affect the emotions you have when you are at home. According to light professionals, certain kinds of lights can make you feel calm or energized, depending on the amount of light. It is a general belief that brighter lights elevate the mood in a room, while dimmer lights create a calmer mood.
Lightings also have significant effects on energizing and increasing productivity in offices. Choosing the best lighting for an office is not as simple as it seems. When choosing the right lighting for your home or office, it is imperative to know the kind of lighting you need to achieve your goal.
Below are the three kinds of lighting to consider in strategizing your lighting plan.
1- Ambient lighting: also knows as general lighting. Ambient lighting serves as the primary source of light for a room or an office. Besides the fundamental lighting usefulness, ambient lighting improves the sense of warmth and depth of a room or office.
2- Task lighting: Often, task lighting refers to increasing illuminance to better accomplish a specific activity. Positioning plays a vital role in the effectiveness or lack of thereof of task lighting. If the lighting is not well-positioned, it may cause eye strain, irritation, headache, or fatigue.
3- Accent lighting: Accent lighting focuses light on a particular area or object and is commonly used to highlight a piece of art or other artifacts. Common types of accent lights include wall sconces, floodlights, recessed lights, torchère lamps, or track lighting.
Irrespective of the purpose of lighting your home or office, it is essential to consider certain factors, such as:
· The color of the room or space
· The height of the ceiling
· Position and number of the windows and access to natural lighting sources. For instance, If your home or office has windows, you might not need a lot of ambient light fixtures. In the same vein, if your home or office is dull, you will need to invest more in ambient lightings.
· The kind of work you will do within the space and your work schedule.
These will help you decide the right light to achieve your objective. It’s worth noting that, while some of the light can perform more than one task at the same time, none can do it all.
A well-lit home can improve your home experience and office productivity as well as your health in many ways. It’s on this basis that lighting specialists advise on the need to choose the right lightings for homes and offices.
Are Electricians Essential Workers?
It is 2021, but entire countries are still reeling from the effects of COVID-19. Partial lockdowns, social restrictions, and face masks have now become a part of our daily lives. Needless to say, many have struggled to adjust to the changes.
Countries have had to contend cautiously to open their economies while protecting the public against the rising cases of infections. As a result, many workers have been forced to work from home while others have completely lost their jobs.
However, some have been deemed ‘essential’ and have continued to turn up for work regardless of the restrictions. This begs the question; are electricians considered essential workers? Can you still count on your residential electrician to provide you with much needed electrical services?
Keep reading to discover why electricians are as essential as healthcare providers and law enforcement officers.
Who Are Essential Workers?
The U.S Department of Homeland Security defines essential workers as those whose job involves the protection of property and safety of human life. They offer a wide range of services that are crucial in continuing vital infrastructure operations. This can range from agriculture to health to safety.
Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, governments have had to decide which workers should work from home as they struggle to contain the spread of the deadly virus. Does a licensed electrician make the government’s list of essential workers?
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), a branch of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, inevitably has electricians in its list of essential workers. According to the agency, electricians are vital to the operations of commercial facilities, infrastructure support services, and public works.
The services of electricians are needed for the performance of essential activities and the safety of occupants in all important places, including;
· Commercial buildings
· Residential buildings
· Hospitals
· Nursing homes
Electricians play a crucial role in ensuring the country stays powered during the COVID-19 crisis. Simply put, critical operations, safety, and security cannot exist without commercial and industrial electricians.
Electricians Are Essential Workers
Think about it this way;
· What powers your coffee maker, the lights you use, or your computer?
· What do you do when you have a problem with your electrical connection?
· Who comes to the rescue when there is a power problem or a communication system failure?
Well, as you can imagine, electricians work hard from behind the scenes to keep things ticking. They are as essential as any worker could be. Therefore, it is unsurprising that they have made the list of essential workers, both at state and federal levels.
Inevitably, the essential services provided by electricians will continue beyond the COVID-19 crisis. Hospitals, nursing homes, and government buildings will still need to be powered. Lights won’t flicker and mobile gadgets and computers will not die. The world will continue relying on electricians for the foreseeable future. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, jobs for certified electricians will continue to grow exponentially in the next 10 years.
Maybe you should consider becoming an electrician? A career in wiring certainly doesn’t sound like a bad idea!
Electricians Must Keep Performing Their Duties
While healthcare workers are on the frontline in the fight against COVID-19, electricians may as well be on the second. Many people are understandably minimizing contact with the outside world to ensure their safety, but electricians still have to do their jobs, putting their lives at risk in the process.
With governments slowly easing restrictions, electricians are faced with unique challenges. They sometimes have to navigate health measures from different authorities as they strive to keep themselves and their customers safe. They have to perform their duties in risky environments to provide this essential service.
When you need an electrician, you simply visit Angie’s List or HomeAdvisor and look for an ‘electrician near me’. However, the electrician cannot take your temperature or enquire about symptoms when they turn up at your place to fix an electrical issue. This is the kind of risk they are putting themselves into.
However, most certified electricians are already putting measures in place to ensure their safety and that of their clients. As a client, it is upon you to ask your residential electrician what measures they have put in place to guarantee your safety and that of your family. Before letting an electrician in your house, feel comfortable to ask them the uncomfortable questions;
· Has someone in their workplace tested positive?
· What precautionary measures are they taking?
· How do they ensure the health of their technicians?
Choose the Best Electricians
Everyone has had an electrical issue that needed immediate sorting at some point. However, the electrician you pick to enter your premises should not put you or your family at risk of infection. Consider the following:
· Does the electrician insist on thoroughly washing their hands before entering your premises?
· Are they keen on social distancing?
· Does their company have an electronic booking system that allows you to sign orders and/or book their services online?
These are some of the measures that professional electricians have put in place to protect themselves and their clients from the deadly virus.
Electricians may not hog the limelight like their medical counterparts or other essential workers, but it’s clear that their services are equally critical during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. Given how crucial their services have been in keeping the country running while assisting other essential workers to continue offering their services, their selflessness will be needed post-COVID.
That said, always ensure you go for certified electricians when hiring. Keep in mind that if an unlicensed electrician does a poor job, you will have to hire another qualified electrician to do the work right. This puts more people at the risk of exposure to the virus.
Final take
Electricians are rightly on the list of essential workers for the critical services they provide. Their work may not make the headlines like, say, doctors, but without them, medical services, safety, and security would not be the same.
Hats off to all essential workers, electricians included.