Boomers Fight Wrinkles With Lighting Systems

Homeowners are waging a battle against Father Time with the light bulb.
By: SALLY BEATTY: The Wall Street Journal Online
At 61 years old, Bill Klenner works hard at staying youthful, lifting weights three times a week, eating right and going to bed early. But until recently, there was one thing he had overlooked -- harsh lighting that can add years to a face.

So when the retired engineer renovated his ranch house in Laguna Beach, Calif., he invested $20,000 in recessed spotlights, wall sconces and low-voltage rope lighting suspended from the ceiling. "It's important to look good and healthy and young," says Mr. Klenner.

So long, Botox. The latest weapon in the battle against Father Time is the light bulb. While film stars and newscasters have long understood the power of lighting to make people look more attractive, they're now being joined by another demographic: Baby-boom homeowners hoping to get rid of glaring overhead light that emphasizes wrinkles, eye bags and double chins.

It's a bright spot for the $3.2 billion home light-bulb industry. In just the last five years, makers have introduced dozens of new bulbs, including a flattering array of fluorescents, halogens and new incandescents that go beyond soft white -- which have helped push sales up about 6% for the year ending in March, according to market researchers Vista Information Services. Late last year, electronics giant Philips introduced an ad portraying a woman looking drawn under the glare of one light, but radiant and smiling under the company's new "natural light" bulb. "Maybe you're not getting older," reads the ad copy. "Maybe you need new lighting."

Years in the entertainment business have made actor William Shatner sensitive to good lighting. "You know the joke about the actor who fell off the ocean liner?" says Mr. Shatner. "After he was going down for the third time and they had the spotlight out, he said, 'Use the amber!'"

That's why when Mr. Shatner wanted to jazz up his home's look, he turned to a pro for help -- Los Angeles lighting designer Michael Regan, who got his start in the business on the lighting crew for rock acts like Santana. At the Shatners, Mr. Regan created "mood" lighting in the living room. He also beamed vivid blue lights on a statue of a porpoise, trained amber and salmon-colored lights on a nearby tree and embedded tiny lights behind vines around a Jacuzzi, creating an effect similar to fireflies.

Lighting designers say the best way to create more age-friendly light is through a technique called "layering" -- long favored by cinematographers and TV cameramen to erase ugly shadows. For homeowners, this means packing rooms with dozens of angled lights that bounce beams off ceilings, walls, counters and floors to fill in the shadows cast by overhead fixtures. (This practice has pushed the bulb count per room in some homes to more than 25). Another solution is dimmers, which allow consumers to precision-tune lights to the most flattering level available.

And then there are the so-called daylight bulbs, which consumers like because they are supposed to replicate light found outdoors, but which some designers say can highlight flaws because they filter out yellow light. "They expose inconsistencies in everything," says New York lighting designer Bentley Meeker. The former film lighting technician adds that he finds daylight particularly "unforgiving."

Creating Scenes

Another lighting tactic, scene creation, involves computerized systems that set a room's mood at the flip of a switch and spotlight items like paintings or flowers. Barbara Bouyea, a lighting expert in Washington Depot, Conn., offers clients scenes such as "cocktails," when the house is lit for dusk, with accent lights on flowers and artwork; and "sexy," for late night, when table lights are set to 15% capacity and, to create contrast, accent lights on flowers set at 50%. In a dining room, a recessed light in the ceiling might be narrowly aimed at a centerpiece to bounce reflected light off the table. "Not only does the food look good," says Ms. Bouyea, who charges clients up to $250 an hour for her services, "but you look incredible. No one has shadows on their skin."

It turns out that it does take a lot of people -- and cash -- to change a light bulb. Jobs can range in price from $20,000 to $150,000 and up, with just a single dimmer switch running $35. To install a computerized lighting system, complete with various scenes and spotlights, Houston lighting designer Michael John Smith says it usually takes a crew of four electricians. In New York City, Gracious Home, an upscale home retailer, recently opened a 4,000-square-foot annex devoted entirely to lighting, with a staff of about 16; it is also planning to hire lighting designers. "Everyone is coming up with new designs, everyone wants to be different," says Wilfredo Lopez, the store's bulb buyer.

Plus, with the trend toward specialized living spaces like media rooms and vanity areas, retailers and designers say they are selling more expensive fixtures than ever. Chicago interior designer Shea Soucie has outfitted five vanity areas in the past year with items like $5,000 chandeliers and $1,200 sconces. Wired, a retailer with stores in Los Angeles, Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and Dallas, says its most-popular chandeliers run about $12,000, up from about $3,000 five years ago. One of the chain's best-selling models: a $38,000 chandelier made of Venetian-blown glass. "It's like when you are sitting in a Ferrari -- you feel faster," says company owner, Mishel Michael.

The let-there-be-light movement comes at the same time conservationists are trying to get people to be more energy-efficient. Packing homes with lots of lights, designers' preferred approach to muting the age effect, is "high-end extravagance and conspicuous consumption," says Howard Geller, executive director of the Southwest Energy Efficiency Project, a Boulder, Colo., advocacy group. "Even if half of them are on, you still don't need 10 or 20 lights" for a room.

Among the conservationists' prime targets are energy-eating incandescents. Those are the traditional dollar-a-bulb variety favored by some designers for their flattering amber glow. Instead, conservationists are pushing fluorescents, which last longer and use about a third the energy of an equivalent incandescent bulb. Starting in October, California will become the first state requiring that at least half the wattage in new home kitchens be fluorescent.

Flip of the Switch

But aging boomers who are investing in the flattering lighting systems say they aren't wasteful at all. Rebecca Besser, for example, expects the state-of-the-art illumination she's putting into her new Chicago home to not only make her look good -- "it hides blemishes," she points out -- but to save energy. How? It'll be easier to turn off lights with the flip of just one switch, instead of running around a house at the last minute trying to turn off stray lights. "I'm a stickler about turning off lights when you don't need them," says Ms. Besser, 43.

Of course, a more flattering environment doesn't always mean shedding more light on a subject. People say, "I love the way my lights look, but I can't read my stupid newspaper," says Sandy Wagner, a lighting designer at Home Depot's upscale Expo Design Center store in Fairfax, Va. Some people have lowered the lights in their homes to such a degree that "you have to move under the recessed light to read."

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