Kichler Lighting has a tradition of producing attractive, quality light fixtures. In operation since 1938, dedication to the high standards of quality and aesthetic appeal set by the company’s founder has kept the decorative lighting company on top, in spite of change of ownership. Founded by Leonard Kichler, the company was later sold to Sam Minoff, who has only allowed the company to progress into what it is today: a leader in the decorative lighting industry. The Kichler design team takes a diverse, internationally open-minded approach to the fixtures it produces, and the best trends in indoor and outdoor lighting decoration make it into the homes of Kichler consumers.

This international influence is clear in the fixture highlighted and pictured here, as it incorporates an Eastern Influence on the shape and design of this outdoor wall-lantern. The slanted top housing of the fixture is reminiscent of Asian outdoor architecture, while the diffusing shades along the sides of the fixture may bring to mind a favorite sushi bar. And while the mellow pagoda-styling of this fixture is smart, there is also wisdom in the ecological effects of the decorative light: this outdoor wall lantern by Kichler is recognized as Night Sky Friendly. It cuts down on light pollution, preserving the universally enjoyed night sky. And that also means that the light generated by the fixture is modest and comfortable, nothing over-done, keeping light glowing where it’s needed, not glaring where it’s not.

This product is one of many offered at StarryNightLights.com, a company dedicated to providing energy efficient, ecologically friendly and, of course, attractive indoor and outdoor lighting options for homes and business. Feel free to check out our website for more options on how you can beautify your home or business while conserving energy, natural resources and your own resources.

Go Green. We’ve been pushing this idea for quite some time now… and it seems to be catching on… finally. Interest in greening up ones lights is on a dramatic rise. Home and business owners are seeing green in going green. What’s behind this sudden interest in all things green? Let’s take a look at a couple of key points.

Climate Change – You simply can’t watch the news without hearing about a recent climate change study… or climate change legislation. This is one of the largest issues that the world has ever had to face. Earth’s climate is changing… due in large part to human activity. The changes being predicted are cataclysmic in nature. Melting ice caps, rising oceans, more frequent and intense hurricanes, the list goes on. Any savings that you can make easily should be snapped up immediately. This is a a no-brainer. You will soon be asked to make much tougher adjustments to your lifestyle.

Rising Energy Costs – Oil is at an all time high (roughly $90/barrel at the time of this post). Oil supplies are being stretched thing by our growing thirst for it. This is beginning to put a crunch on many energy intense industries. At the same time, coal while quite plentiful here in the US is being looked at with a more skeptical eye. Coal is (by most standards) a dirty fuel. Sure, it packs a lot of punch and is easy to transport, but it (like all fossil fuels) adds significant pollutants to our atmosphere (see climate change above). Efforts to make coal less polluting are expensive

Its time we all realized that the answer to our dual problems of climate change and resource depletion might come with a twist. Instead of simply hoping that we’ll find a replacement for the cheap/plentiful energy we’ve historically had access to, we may need to face the reality that we simply have to begin to get serious about energy conservation. With the population of the Earth now over 6 billion, we just can’t continue with the wastefully inefficient practices that we’ve grown so comfortable with. Sure, there are many promising fuel alternatives on the horizon (especially solar and wind)… but we simply can’t have 6 billion energy wasters on the planet. We need to look for the low hanging fruit… those energy saving options that don’t require some major discovery to be realized… those that don’t require us to completely turn our lives upside down. Those types of decisions will likely be forced upon us in the future. For now, we should simply find the easiest ways to conserve energy and embrace these wholeheartedly. With all that said, here are some tips to help you begin conserving energy around your home or business.

• The most energy efficient device ever invented is the switch. Start turning lights and appliances off when they’re not needed. For your outdoor lights, this means most of the time. It is wholly irresponsible to leave ones exterior lights on from dusk to dawn. This has got to be the poster child of energy waste. If you’re not outside…. and you’re not expecting company… turn your lights off! You’ll save a bunch of money in the process and pick some of the low hanging fruit of energy savings mentioned above. If you feel a major need to keep your lights on for security purposes… let me tell you… leaving your lights on will NOT make you any safer. If you’re still not convinced by all the studies that have been done showing now significant benefit to using light to reduce crime… install motion sensors to control your lights. This will keep the lights off most of the time… while ensuring that they’ll come on the instant they’re needed. This instant-on feature of motion sensors likely packs far more security than a dusk to dawn “security light” ever could.
• Reduce the wattage of any lights you do need to an absolute minimum. 100w bulbs for every fixture in the home is simply overkill and a tremendous waste of money and natural resources. You’d be surprised at just how efficient and adaptable the human eye is. Our eyes have adapted over millenium to enable us to see in low light conditions. I’m not suggesting that we live in the dark… just that we use appropriate lighting levels. Many people simply use the brightest lights available (and then leave them on all night long) without the slightest clue that they’re not benefiting from this behavior… and are actually doing significant damage to the only planet that will be inhabited by humans for the foreseeable future.
• Replace all the incandescent bulbs that you can with compact fluorescent bulbs. Compact fluorescent light bulbs use only about 20-25% of the energy that incandescent bulbs use for the same amount of illumination. They also last several times longer… so you won’t have to replace them as often. The incandescent light bulb is best described as a heat source that also gives off light. Don’t believe me? Just touch a bulb that’s been on for more than a minute or two. You can easily scorch the flesh off your fingers testing this one out. Compact fluorescent bulbs by contrast are significantly cooler…. Energy is converted to light and heat… so if you can produce less heat… you can consume less energy. Many of todays newest products… from light fixtures to major appliances now sport the Energy Star logo on them. This is a clear sign that these products consume far less energy than earlier versions would have. Energy Star certified lights are required to make use of compact fluorescent lamps. Look for the Energy Star logo when you go to make your next purchase.
• Use only night sky friendly outdoor lights. Think about it… if you’re only shining light where its needed… ie… on the ground… you’re already being energy efficient. You can get the same amount of illumination on the ground with 50 watts as your non sky friendly neighbor can with 100. You’re already ahead of the game.

So, there you have it… a few simple suggestions to get you started conserving energy… without having to turn your life upside down. You can save energy… save money in the process… reduce your carbon footprint… reduce you greenhouse gas emissions… all while maintaining the quality of life you’ve grown accustomed to. Big changes may be on the horizon, but you can get started right now and have a positive impact on the environment.

Just wanted to let you know about a new website dedicated to astro-photography. It’s called Adventures in Astrophotography (www.AdventuresInAstroPhotography.com). If you’ve ever wanted to learn how to take pictures of the night sky… or just like looking at cool images of the night sky, this is a site you’ll want to bookmark and visit often. Created by Starry Night Lights own Anthony Arrigo, the site will take you through the basics of astrophotography and beyond. You can find out about telescopes, camera and image processing software in the process.

The beauty of the Intermountain West and Southwest regions of the United States is enhanced by the histories and tales of the pioneers, homesteaders and outlaws that settled these areas. And the homesteads or hideouts of these great forebears became a safe haven in the isolated and lonesome wilderness. For a taste of this long-established mountain and southwest mood, consider the easily rugged look of this brass, rough-edged wall sconce from SPJ Lighting. Exterior lighting like this can add a welcoming, homestead feel to your abode as you head home after a day of mending fences, navigating treacherous cattle drives, and surviving urban traffic.

The fixture’s mellow-though-worn styling and edges break-in the architecture of your home, kind of like how an old pair of Levi’s makes anyone feel like a cowboy. The light cast from the fixture’s edges will spread in a lively, fray-edged ring, maintaining an organic, comfortable dispersion of light around your outdoor living space.

And calm shadow is part of what makes this fixture so neighbor friendly–the is directed downward, maintaining a warm glow on your property, not offending your neighbors, whether they be residents of the next house over or the wildlife inhabiting the landscape around your desert ranch or mountain escape.

And if you remember the second verse from the great anthem of life in the west, Home on the Range, you’ll remember ‘How often at night, [that] the heavens are bright.’ This fixture makes a great selection because it’s design reduces light pollution and keeps the heavens bright, that the ‘glittering stars’ may still be enjoyed by anyone lucky enough to wander away from the city. Pictured above in Aged Brass, this fixture comes in other finishes and colors including Gunmetal Black, Bronze, Moss, Autumn and more, so that you can make your home uniquely, comfortably rugged. Check out an extensive selection of outdoor lighting that’s environmentally friendly at StarryNightLights.com.

Your shadow will follow you anywhere but into a dark room. But as it follows you into your favorite, well-lit room, your shadow (and the overall shadow of the room) doesn’t have to be so present. Direct light, that is, light straight from the light bulb, will cast distinct, definite shadow. Ambient light, on the other hand, softens the edges of shadow, and if the lighting is even enough and ambient enough, shadow disappears almost entirely, considerably softening the mood and atmosphere of that favorite room.

Justice Design Group offers a thorough line of indoor lighting fixtures built around this principle: ambient light will warm a room, not heat it. The large wall sconce pictured scatters light evenly, as opposed to flooding its surroundings with direct, shadow-casting glare. The warmth of the light generated by the fixtures in the Ambiance Collection works with existing color to create a glow in the atmosphere of your indoor space. A room becomes more comfortable as it is surrounded and filled with light.

The Large Ceramic Wall Sconce from the Ambiance Collection is easy on the eyes in two ways: it keeps the lighting warm and soft, and the sconce itself is styled to fit just as well into your room, whether the lights are on or off. By allowing the light to be diffused through the ceramic body, and bounced and spread across the wall, the entire wall becomes your light, not just the bulb. Offered in a variety of finishes, this sconce can also be ordered in the pictured ceramic bisque, which well receives stains, paints and other finishes to be matched to the interior design scheme of your living space. For more information on this sconce, other light fixtures from the Ambience Collection by Justice Design Group, or products from a host of other vendors, check out StarryNightLights.com.

With all the different spots in your yard, you’re more proud of some than others: the rock feature, the patio, the laid stone or stamped concrete path from the front yard to the back, the list goes on.  Well, are you enjoying the uniqueness of your home landscape as much as you could, or even should?  How about in the evenings?  Try utilizing some outdoor landscape lighting to really accent the beauty of your home and take the evening chat or party outside.  Tastefully placed outdoor lamps and fixtures will add to the evening atmosphere of your backyard and provide for you a comfortable, newly discovered evening living space. 

Hadco Lighting produces an outdoor lighting fixture that may accent the features of your landscape to create such a comfortable mood for a welcome evening chat.  The copper Hadco Low Voltage Path Light provides just enough light to highlight the strengths of your yard without overpowering the space as a whole.  Well styled in sleek copper, the fixture will age to the mature pale-green copper patina of much long-standing architecture.  The construction of the path light is to be just as long-standing with rolled under spun copper housing and solid copper stem.  While the coloration of the product will mature with time, the path light’s built to last and will be a long-term fixture in your landscape scheme.

So stay outside and watch the time of day change from evening to night.  And do it smart with the Hadco Lighting Low Voltage Path Light.  You’ll be saving energy while adding a tasteful night-life to your home’s outdoor living spaces.  Saving energy reduces the long-term strain on the environment and your pocket book.  Find out more about this and other indoor and outdoor light fixtures at StarryNightLights.com.

I had a conversation with a gentleman the other day that covered a wide range of topics. Two in particular rang clear as items that warranted further discussion. The first was Starry Night Lights… its mission and why it was created. The second was about the night sky in general… and its loss in particular. This gentleman’s position was two-fold. 1) The night sky wasn’t really all that important to begin with 2) We hadn’t really lost that much anyway.

I’ll start on point #2. Standing out on my driveway on a clear summer/fall night, I can see the Milky Way spanning the sky overhead. It is fairly clear to most anybody what they are looking at. As such, its not really missing at all. This is like saying that a 15 second rain shower in the desert has ended the drought. Sure, the Milky Way was still (sort of) visible from Park City, Utah. But Park City is a relatively small town. Most people in the developed world can no longer see the Milky Way at all. Additionally, the Milky Way is only barely visible here any more. A mere decade ago, skies overhead were filled with many times more stars, with the Milky Way being visible from horizon to horizon. Now, it struggles merely to be seen on the clearest and darkest of nights.

Checkout the topimage. I took this shot about 75 miles east of Park City in Utah’s Uinta Mountains. Aimed to the southeast, with no towns or cities in that direction, this is what the sky looks like. Here, the Milky Way jumps right out at you. No struggling to detect it. Bam! There it is. The hazy glow of billions upon billions of star, the colorful nebulae and intervening galactic dust. Its all there for the curious observer to take in. This is what the sky is supposed to look like.

Don’t believe me? Don’t think skies could look like this where you live? Checkout the following image. It shows the night sky on 2 separate nights. The shot on the left shows what things looked like on the night of the great blackout of 2003. The shot on the right shows what things looked like on the following night after power had been restored. Note how much light is being thrown into the night sky by the use of countless improperly installed lights. Checkout the “security” lights on the home pictured here. This must be the rudest individual on the planet. I hope that somebody has shown him this image and that he’s changed his ways.

Starry Night Lights was created with one goal in mind, to protect our heritage of star-filled night skies. Sorry, that’s it. I’m selfish. I want to be able to look up at night and see star-filled skies. I want my daughter to grow up knowing the night sky as its supposed to be, not as some entirely washed out, orangy haze. Mankind has gazed up at the night sky in wonder for thousands of years. I find it amazing that at a time of incredible technological advancement we are the least familiar with the night sky. Perhaps our technology blinds us into thinking that we are somehow more important than the universe we live in? I don’t know. What I do know is that this is a loss of epic proportions. Generations of children are now being raised without ever seeing a truly star-filled skies. Many just think this is how it always is. This generational amnesia only allows us to let things get worse.  Perhaps the growing awareness of the problems of global warming and energy depletion will finally help us to realize the folly in our ways? Perhaps we’ll once again focus on efficiency and proper resource usage? Perhaps, you’ll take the initiative? This problem was not created in a single night. It will not be fixed in a single night. However, home by home and business by business, we can make a difference. If individually, we each reduce the wattage of our lights… and turn them off when not needed, perhaps at some point in our own lives, the skies will be better and more visible than they now are?

Sea Gull Lighting has been selected as Energy Star’s 2007 partner of the year, marking the charming third-time receipt of such recognition from the program jointly begun by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and U.S. Department of Energy to provide consumers with energy efficient options from business and manufacturers. Being included and distinguished in this group of companies proves Sea Gull Lighting’s commitment to providing products in indoor and outdoor lighting that make a difference to consumers and the environment in how efficiently they use energy.

This Outdoor Lantern by Sea Gull lighting is one such product designed to be energy smart and is Dark Sky Friendly. This means that the outdoor light fixture casts the light it produces downward to where it is most useful, lighting the path we need to see instead of the night sky, which is actually suffering from too much extra light. This excess of light being shed into the atmosphere is a phenomenon known as light pollution, that is, the dull glow seen in the sky that hampers the view of the stars, planets and other celestial bodies out there to be seen.

With it’s cool, smooth aluminum finish, Sea Gull’s Outdoor Lantern is effectively present in your outdoor space without distracting from it. Available in both bronze and white finishes, the fixture can be matched to your home or business. Keeping light directed downward and contained, the design of the fixture limits light trespass as well, keeping the light on your property and saving face with the neighbors.

As a proud provider of Energy Star and Dark Sky Friendly outdoor products from Sea Gull Lighting, we at StarryNightLights.com invite you to keep saving and conserving as you walk inside too by checking out Sea Gull’s Energy Star certified indoor fixtures as well.

Skies over Park City were crystal clear this evening… offering up some sweet views of the Harvest Moon. The moon rose an amber color… reminiscent of the wheat traditionally harvested by moonlight this time of year. Amber quickly gave way to bright white though as the moon rose above the thickest part of Earth’s atmosphere. I’m always amazed at just how much light comes off the moon… and just how easily I could move about outside by just moonlight. The sight was quite spectacular…. with the moon rising in the east and the giant planet Jupiter setting in the west. To be fair, the full moon actually occurs tomorrow just after noon… making tomorrow’s moonrise the “official” Harvest Moon. Still, being only about 15 hours before true full moon… and tomorrow night’s moonrise coming about 7 hours after… this is about as close to a full moon as you’re going to get. Plus, by snapping the picture this evening… I was able to beat the crowds and get a shot of the moon before things get too crazy. You know how celebrities get before a big premier and all.
(The shot was taken with a Canon Digital Rebel XTi shooting at prime focus through a 160mm Astro-Physics Starfire refractor)

You can look for tomorrow nights full Harvest Moon to rise in the east around 7:15 (later if your eastern horizon is obstructed). It will cruise across the sky from dusk until dawn. No equipment is needed to enjoy the full moon, but if you have binoculars or a telescope, be sure to point them towards Earth’s nearest celestial neighbor. You’ll see far more detail in the eyepiece than you can ever hope to see from any other celestial object.

An exterior light fixture won’t disappear in daylight when it isn’t needed, but the half cylinder shape of the AmeriTec Half Cylinder (ATL-33) wall sconce remains softly attractive, even during daylight hours. The smooth, easily rounded styling blends well with even-finished, painted walls, not disrupting the tone of the space. In its simplicity, the ceramic sconce adds light without adding the distractive bulk or weight of other fixtures.

AmeriTec Lighting has created this fixture for either indoor or outdoor use; it can be ordered with open-top for indoor use or closed top for wet or outdoor use.

The fixture is available in over 60 stock finishes, but if you have a hard time finding the right color, the AmeriTec Half cylinder wall sconce can be purchased in its blank bisque finish—part of the genius behind the ceramic construction allows the fixture to be painted or finished as needed. The color can be dialed in exactly so that the transition from wall to fixture to wall is seamless. The unglazed, fired ceramic bisque finish will receive watercolor, oil, and acrylic paints, as well as plasters, stuccos and other finishes, making the fixture quite the versatile chameleon among indoor or outdoor light fixtures—it can be finished to blend in with or accent your décor scheme. In its blank bisque finish, scuff marks and other discoloration can be easily removed from the fixture with a light grade sandpaper or abrasive cloth.

The mellow, sleek look of this ceramic wall sconce from AmeriTec Lighting will compliment your indoor or outdoor living space. AmeriTec offers a wide selection of Dark Sky Friendly interior and exterior lighting products. Check them out here, or click StarryNightLights.com to view products from all our vendors.