-Kitchen
Any room is hard to light, but the kitchen is the greatest challenge. According to a survey conducted by architects, kitchens typically use 20 percent of the electricity for an entire house. There are more light sources in a kitchen than in any other room in the house, and they burn about 30 hours a week. That's longer than the TV is on and 50 percent longer than lights burn in other rooms. A kitchen is divided into zones, each with its own lighting requirements. A laboratory and a family room, the modern kitchen has to accommodate diverse functions. A kitchen also contains shiny refelctive surfaces and dark recesses. What's more, it can be dangerous anywhere there is the combination of electricity and water or fire and grease, slippery surfaces, and so forth. Food preparation and cleanup call for bright, shadow-free task lighting for bood visibility. Use cool fluorescent bulbs for countertop illumination, and mount the fixtures right under the front edge of the upper cabinets. To minimize glare, choose a nonshiny countertop material. If the cabinets don't have a strip to hide under-cabinet lights, add one. I installed decorative oak trim at the bottom of my wall-mounted cabinets to hide the fluorescent strip lights. To punch up the wattage over the sink, I recommend two 100-watt incandescent fixtures here or two 75-watt halogen lamps.

Beyond task lighting, the kitchen should have ample general illumination that is adjustable with a dimmer swtich. Install recessed or ceiling-mounted fixtures approximately 12 to 15 inches from the front of the upper cabinets. That puts them roughly right over the outside edge of the countertop. This arrangement will sufficiently illuminate the interior of the upper cabinets when the doors are open as well as the front edge of the countertop or work surface.

-Bathrooms
You need two kinds of lighting in the bathroom: ambient light to get you to the shower or to take a pill, and a task light to tweeze your eyebrows and shave (or perform any other type of personal grooming).

To look good in a bathroom mirror, light should come at you horizontally from the sides. I gave my friend, Sara, some milk-glass shades for sconces in her master bath. She had the correct fixtures but the wrong shades. Hers were opaque rather than translucent. They allowed light to project only from the tops onto the ceiling. Dramatic? Yes! Functional? No. Her husband, Jerry, had to shave in the kids' bathroom where the task lighting was better. Shaving and applying makeup call for light that emanates from both sides of the mirror at eye level. The light should radiate from the middle of your face, usually about 60 to 66 inches high for adults. The right height may seem obvious, but I recently saw bathroom sconces that were almost 6 feet from the floor. The top of my head looked great.

Also remember that light generates heat. After a hot shower and the rush to get dressed, I can lean over the sink to put my contacts in and get soaked with dampness. I don't need a zillion watts of electricity for this final step, and neither do you. Choose bulbs that have enough power to produce a comfortable level of light without wilting you at the same time. To determine your comfort level, test out bulbs of various wattage until you find your level of preference.

-Living Rooms
The ceiling represents 30 percent of a room's surface area, and large living rooms have lots of ceiling. Use it to both bounce light and contain sources of light. Ceiling lights break the hotel-lobby look of a flat, white ceiling and also raise the eye.

An hanging fixture in the center of the room creates balance and interest. So do recessed lights in the corners or near doors and windows. Floor outlets give additional flexibility for bringing in portable fixtures. If you have a full basement, installing an outlet in the floor is easy and inexpensive. A floor outlet will allow you to bring light into the middle of a room -- at the piano or next to a softa that isn't up against a wall -- without running cords under or over the rug, which is ugly and dangerous.

-Dining Rooms
LIghting the dining table should be your main consideration. It will make both the food and the guests look good if the lighting is just right. The size of the chandelier depends on the size of your table, but allow at least 6 inches of clearance on each side of the table so that guests will not bump their heads. Illumination above the edge of the table shines on guests' heads, laps or plates, casting unflattering beams and making everyone hot. Our body temperature rises anyway when we eat. To properly light the table, use a minimum of 150 watts and a maximum of 200 to 300 watts. Again, you many want to test this out to see what's comfortable for you. And don't forget to install a dimmer switch.

Good lighting in the dining room is second only to the food -- OK, third to the company. However, if everything looks bad, everyone will be cranky and the food won't matter. When I had Thanksgiving with friends, I secretly reset the dining room lights. I turned off the buffet lamp and dimmed the chandelier. Someone kept turning it back up, but I was persistent, and the meal and the guests looked wonderful -- once the lighting was perfect.

-Bedrooms
I like a light switch I can flip on when I walk into the bedroom. For me it doesn't matter if it's for an overhead fixture or beside lamps (because my bed is near the entrance). Bedside swing-arm reading lamps with three-way bulbs can prevent a lot of bickering between couples. They are a small price for keeping both parties happy.

-Hallways
I say, make 'em pretty. Because the ceiling and walls are the only places to decorate, the ceiling is the ideal spot for a pretty light fixture. Hanging lanterns or milk-glass pendants will provide good illumination while looking deocrative. Shades with closed bottoms will eliminate harshness from glare.

My house never looks prettier than when it's lighted at night. It is cozy, intimate, warm, welcoming, friendly, engaging, functional, and literate. How can I tell it's literate? By the properly positioned, shaded, and outfitted-wth-the-right-bulb-and-wattage reading lamps that are visible everywhere.