Yamaha Home TheaterIf you're lucky enough to be planning a new kitchen or a kitchen renovation, you're probably looking for ways to make the space more energy efficient. If you want under cabinet lighting and you don't think adhesive lights will provide the long-term solution you're looking for, consider the Kichler Design Pro LED Under Cabinet Lighting fixtures.
The lights are ultrathin, with a half-inch profile, and they last up to 40,000 hours, or about 20 years of normal use. And, instead of the blue hues that were once the hallmark of LED lighting solutions, these lights emit a soft-white light to add warmth (but not heat!) to your kitchen.
Installation is simple: the fixtures snap together with interconnected wiring for a seamless flow of light under multiple, separate cabinets. The lights come in 6-, 12-, and 18-inch lengths and your choice of bronze, nickel, or white finishes.
Lighting is a critical element in the kitchen. Without good workspace lighting, you can't see what you're doing, of course, but lighting also sets the mood. At the end of the day, when you turn off the kitchen lights, the space is dark and uninviting. Add a little under-cabinet lighting, however, and the kitchen beckons, "Hey, it's okay. You can still have a glass of water or a snack before you go to bed."
But if you're not going through a total kitchen redo, how can you add in the high-end look of under-cabinet lighting? I don't know if you've heard, but a couple people have been concerned about the economy lately, so paying for all that extra electrical work might not be in the budget.
Never fear. Get yourself a set of Mighty Bright mini tap lights. The lights have adhesive foam on the bottom and can attach under your cabinets or even inside them to brighten dark corners of your kitchen. They're battery operated (lithium batteries are included) and turn on and off with a tap. At $9.99 for a set of two, these lights won't break your budget, and you'll have them "installed" in moments.
The lights come in black, silver, or pink. Order online or find them at major retail outlets nationwide.
If you liked the idea of a sparkly table runner but thought, "I'm not really a table runner kind of person," you may be in luck. Sylvania doesn't want anyone to be left in the dark, so they also offer a lovely selection of LED place mats in a black or burgundy finish.
The fiber optic place mats can run for up to 20 hours on the included button cell batteries and provide a starry night effect designed to enhance special dining occasions. Just push a button to activate, and enjoy the ambiance as the lights gently twinkle. You can easily replace the batteries when necessary for ongoing special effects.
The 11 inches by 16.5 inches are treated with Scotchgard for simple spot cleaning. Use them in the dining room or as accents on a coffee table or a bedroom dresser. They'll add a little extra sparkle to your night.
So, the house is festive, but the table seems to be lacking that special shine? Sure, you could drape the chairs with holiday lights, but that might get a little tacky, plus all the cords could easily trip someone. Instead, why not whip out this LED table runner from Sylvania?
It's a fiber optic table runner that quickly and easily transforms an ordinary table into an illuminated party space. Charge it up, and it will shine for 10 hours and make your dinnerware sparkle. (You'll have to come up with witty repartee on your own.)
At 12 inches by 60 inches, the runner fits a variety of tables, and it comes with a rechargeable battery pack. You can find it online at Sylvania for about $70.
Feeling a little blasé about how ordinary your blinds look from day to night? OK. Fine, so you don't care. How about if they did something more than just open and close?
Designed by Yoon-Hui Kim and Eun-Kyung Kim, the Solar Vertical Lamp takes an average vertical blind and embeds it with special mini photovoltaics and LED pixels. Close the blinds during the day and the miniature solar pads on the back of the blinds start to soak up the sun's energy. Once the sun goes down, artfully placed lighting pixels illuminate in certain parts of the blinds.
(Credit:
Inhabitant)
The two-dimensional lamps come in table lamp, floor lamp, and chandelier forms. Besides being completely energy-efficient and saving you tons of money on your monthly bill, they create a sexy and dramatic ambiance for any part of the home.
(Credit:
Inhabitat)
(Credit:
Oskay via Flickr.com)
The holidays are upon us, which means full bellies, festive colors, and brightly colored lights. Meet a dining room table whose brightly lit top would fit in perfectly with the rest of your twinkling home decorations.
OK, so it wasn't created for the holiday season. To the contrary, it was made by Windell Oskay, who jokes that he "built it because (they) needed a new dining table, and I guess (they're) just that kind of people." Oskay brought the table to the Maker Faire, and posted several pictures of its construction on his Flickr Web site. Since then, it has been featured in several blogs.
The table is constructed from 448 LEDs of various colors embedded into perforated board. The circuitry that drives the LEDs was designed in a way that causes them to light up and shut off as a response to ambient light above them while the family eats. After the electronics boards were made, Oskay set them into a stained birch and poplar table frame and covered them with a piece of recycled glass that he recovered from an old desk.
The festive and attractive design is also environmentally conscious: the table uses recycled materials like the glass top, and LEDs require so little power to run that the table doesn't require a ton of energy to function. It's definitely not a centerpiece for every family's dining room, but technophiles and children-at-heart can all agree that it's a cool invention. To see it in action, check out the video here.
I'm a person who doesn't like surprises. I don't like practical jokes, I hate unexpected visitors, and I loathe peeling a banana and finding it's rotten. In a perfect world, a grapefruit would still be good three months after I bought it. The designers of the latest product in the battle for fresh fruit might be able to do just that.
Active Fresh Blue Technology is the secret behind Blue providing fruit with the same type of light they receive in nature, which allows fruit to stay fresh longer. According to Yanko Design, the blue LED is the key to keeping your fruit fresh, extending its shelf life, and increasing the nutrients in the fruit that keep it healthy before it's picked. The same technology has been used in refrigerators manufactured by Arcelik and Mitsubishi to keep food fresh longer and kill bacteria the same way.
Right now, you're reading this with a look of sheer confusion on your face. You're wondering how something that looks like a glorified fruit bowl will keep your peaches perfect.The technology behind Blue isn't new but is still in its experimental phase. Mitsubishi's line of Folio refrigerators utilizes photosynthesis to increase the nutritional value of vegetables and fruits stored in the crisper. The LED increases the vitamin C through photosynthesis by 150 percent, which in turn helps to increase the shelf life and reduce bacteria. The color apparently also plays a role in how healthy the produce is with orange producing 50-percent more vitamin C in broccoli. The Cosmo Plant Company in Fukuroi, Japan, currently grows lettuce using red LED, which is apparently its favorite due to chlorophyll running on red photons, and the company produces 7,000 heads of lettuce a day. The lettuce matures three times faster than being grown outdoors and has decreased the company's electric bill by 60 percent.
Still in its concept phase, a price and a release date hasn't been announced yet. While it won't keep it fresh forever, you'll at least get your money's worth for those $3-a-pound pomegranates.
If you're tired of bad light on that broccoli or would prefer the banana pudding to slowly appear before your sleepy eyes instead of shocking you from your stupor, there's a trend toward offering swankier and, for some companies, more energy-efficient lighting in high-end refrigerators this year.
Last month, GE started offering the GE Profile bottom freezer refrigerator with LED lighting for "brighter, crisper illumination."
The company says that by replacing large standard lightbulbs with flat-panel LED lighting its designers are not only making the view prettier, but making more room in the fridge, too, which is Energy Star qualified and retails starting at $2,099.
Meantime, this JennAir Side By Side Luxury model has bright lights installed in its two "ClimateZone" drawers.
(As an aside, if you're interested in replacing your incandescent fridge bulb with an LED bulb, this couple at Watthackers analyze both the energy and the cost savings.)
While the merits of using LED lights in the fridge are debatable, their use apparently goes beyond the green aesthetic to a promise to keep fruits and veggies fresher in the crisper. This model, from Mitsubishi Electric's Folio collection, (who knew this company even made fridges?) claims LED sunlight will keep your fruits and veggies fresher longer bouncing the light on chlorophyll in vegetables to increase their vitamin content.
This Make zine blogger questions whether LED sunlight installed in your crisper can truly enhance nutritional value of your food. In tests, Makezine reported that Mitsubishi "starting from the concept of controlling nutrition loss...has been able to achieve increasing nutritional values in a totally new-concept refrigerator. Research showed that the light's color was important: The orange light creates chlorophyll in vegetables without inducing them to grow. A small bank of LEDs in the roof of the vegetable drawer produces lights at a wavelength of 590 nanometers (orange). Mitsubishi Electric found that after three days, the vitamin C level in broccoli sprouts stored in their new refrigerator was 50 percent higher than in a conventional refrigerator."
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