I’ve been a lighting nerd for a long time.

I have never liked “light the whole room” overhead fixtures. When I was a child, my father was baffled by my desire for muted lighting. “You’ll go blind,” he’d say, as I would read at night by what he thought of as insufficient beam strength.

Typical school or office fluorescent lighting was never a happy space for me. Whenever I could — and former colleagues will attest to this — I did what I could to mitigate the overhead glare. Maintenance staff would unscrew the fluorescent tubes over my work station and I’d bring in my own incandescent desk lamp task lighting. When I graduated to having a private office later in my career, in came floor lamps to complete the warm glow.

In my current job, pre-COVID, my desk was in an open work space lit with that enervating overhead flat light, mitigated by some natural light coming from windows. It was only several months into COVID-driven work-from-home that I realized just how exhausting that lighting had been for me.

So when it came to picking lighting on Renovation Road, including our two work-from-home offices, the prime directive was: Keep it warm.

There are places where bright light is brilliant — over a sink, as an example. But at least for me, the colour of that light is the difference between lovely and loathsome.

LEDs — “Light-emitting diodes” — technology for a long time has been the enemy of beauty. Our new kitchen under-counter lights are a warm LED that work. Many LED bulbs, however, even when ranked “warm”, give off a sickly, clinical bluish glow.

I’m also not a big fan of pot lights dotted throughout a ceiling. These were everywhere in our Toronto apartment and the only time we turned them on was when we were vacuuming or someone lost an earring at a party.

Early on in our renovation process, I shared my lighting quirks with our contractor, who is a licensed electrician. We agreed he would wire dimmer switches wherever possible: these are, to me, a crucial investment in having the ability to shape different moods in a space.

I also love pendants that put light where you want it: on a dining table or a kitchen island. It’s bright and direct and keeps the ceiling, normally not a thing of beauty, muted.

And lamps. More lamps. They provide the happy-inducing warm glow (with the right bulbs). I still prefer an old-school incandescent bulb, increasingly difficult to source.

Our kitchen island pendants are a quirky colourful trio sold through Etsy, the crafty product website that has morphed into an international bazaar clearing house of products. The designer we consulted about colour early on suggested these and, when I bought them near the end of 2022, they came from China, routed through a distributor in Russia-attacked Ukraine — an Etsy distributor that, as I write this blog post, is no longer in operation.

We’ve installed old-school track lights with halogen bulbs in living room and dining room, as well as the main bedroom, to best light art installed on the walls.

And, influenced by my current job as the VP, Communications and Marketing for Canada’s national injury prevention charity Parachute, we now have a collection of battery-operated “candles” for soft accent lights. I still have wax-and-wick light-by-match tea lights nestled in decorative glass holders dotted around the place, and I light real wax candles at the dining room table for dinner, but there is a carefree charm to the safe “set it and forget it” glow of these imitation candles you turn on and off with a wee switch (or can be set to come on and off automatically). These produce neither heat, hot wax drippings or smoke but do a fair imitation of a real candle’s flickering glow.

As we near the end of Renovation Road, we only have a few pieces remaining to install, including, yes, a couple more lamps. And as the days lengthen, we are enjoying our new rooms bathed in natural, outdoor light. But I will find great comfort and happiness, especially in the short days of winter, to have warm lights cozying our refurbished nest.