Decorating A Colonial House With Christmas Lights

"I love the play of shadow on walls and ceilings. Design Within Reach's Random pendant is a cheap and chic way to get the effect. Depending on how it's hung, it casts patterns that look somewhere between a Jackson Pollock painting and a spiderweb." —KRISTIN HEIN

"In a bedroom, you need what I call a love light — a lamp you can dim when you're feeling amorous. In my bedroom, I have a Noguchi paper standing lamp. I use a 25-watt incandescent bulb — barely any light at all — that goes amber when I put the dimmer on. It gives everyone the golden glow of late afternoon sunshine — that most beautiful light." —CLODAGH

"I use flowers and plants a lot because they really wake up a living room — and then I light them theatrically. I'll wash a flower arrangement in light, or aim one under a big leaf so that it just glows, as if in sunlight, even if it's midnight." —LARRY LASLO

"I love to put a lamp on a long dining table. Clear one end, and put the light and all the food and flowers there. It makes a lovely still life and floods the scene with warmth." —BARBARA BARRY

"If you really want to go the distance, have diffusers made for the tops of all your lampshades. A diffuser is a plate that you attach to the lamp itself — we make ours out of sandblasted glass — and it prevents the light from casting a big shadow on the ceiling." —J. RANDALL POWERS

"A room should have multiple kinds of light to balance it and give it interest: hanging fixtures with uplights and downlights in them to add perspective, table lamps for tasks, and candlelight for coziness. It's beautiful to group candles in twos and threes on tables and on window ledges. You can use the fat chunky ones and set them on flat stones or old pieces of wood." —JAMES HUNIFORD

"We designed a dismally dark New York apartment on a low floor, where all the rooms faced a brick wall. We installed full-spectrum lightbulbs all around the window frames — eight bulbs per frame — and then I hung elegant plantation shutters with very wide louvers. You tilt the louvers in any direction and they scoop up the light and shine it up to the ceiling or down to the floor. The electrician and I rigged up a timer tied to the fall and spring equinoxes, so that the light changes throughout the day and year, simulating the arc of the sun across the sky from east to west. It looks real!" —ERIC COHLER

"The best lighting trick in our house happens to be in our dining room, but you could do it so wonderfully in a bedroom. It's based on having the right color ceiling in a high-gloss finish. I use a shade of warm pink that my wife calls Never Need a Facelift. With candlelight, you get a color so romantic and sexy that I've joked about wanting to mirror the floorboards so I can see who was fooling around under the table." —ALEXANDER JULIAN

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