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Indoor & Outdoor Lighting Solutions (Ortho Books)

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Plan for better lighting:

Lighting design ideas

Room-by-room recommendations

Landscape and exterior lighting

Light placement and angle of coverage

Safe do-it-yourself instructions:

Switch, receptacle, and fixture installation

Trouble-shooting problems/solutions

Energy conservation options

From spotlights to mood setters:

Elegant to casual lighting effects

Effective task lighting

Defining outdoor areas

expert opinion -
Caveat Emptor to the low voltage outdoor lighting enthusiasts.

I was led to this book by another reviewer; I wouldn't have found it since it didn't come up on my usual"landscape lighting" search. My specialty is low voltage outdoor lighting and I'm always looking for a better book on the topic. This isn't it.

The title refers to both indoor and outdoor lighting but the text is 90% indoor and only 10% outdoor when one might expect 50/50. My 20 years in low voltge outdoor lighting was preceded by 20 years of interior lighting design so I feel justified in claiming "expert opinion". The text on interior lighting contains nothing new; the text on outdoor low voltage lighting is rather perfunctory. There are only a handful of photographs (8, and that's a stretch) illustrating outdoor lighting and perhaps 100 or more of interior lighting schemes. Clearly this is an interior lighting book with a bit of exterior lighting thrown in to justify the title (and to perhaps broaden the market).

I was disappointed in my expectations that this new Ortho book would update the 1984 Ortho book on outdoor lighting which is reviewed along with a number of other books dealing with this topic on this site. With me the issue arises from the fact that there are many, many books on interior lighting and very, very few on exterior lighting. What were the marketing people thinking of when they slotted a book into a crowded segment while giving short shrift to a topic of growing interest and few books?

The prominent placement of "outdoor" next to "indoor" on the night scene cover may mislead someone in search of a landscape lighting book. What they seek is not here. The 1984 Ortho book on outdoor lighting merely needed updating to include the latest innovations in exterior lighting equipment and techniques. The only seriously out-of-date portions of the earlier book dealt mainly with lamps (light bulbs) of an earlier era since modern miniature lamp types offer more efficient, longer-lasting, compact light sources with a broad range of wattages and beam patterns that introduce economy and precision into the realm of low voltage outdoor lighting. This new book was a missed opportunity to modernize the text of an old book that had great information and wonderful photographs. Go figure.

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