Doing a search on “blind” brought up a lot of interesting questions but not this one.
In a blind persons home (assuming they live alone or all family members are blind) do they live in the dark at night? So if you were to go visit them at night and knocked on the door they would answer like nothing was out of the ordinary even though there was not a light on anywhere in the house?
Do they have lights in their homes?
And if they did have lamps/lights, are they just there for the convenience of their guests?
I assume you mean people who are totally blind, who have no visual ability at all. Many people who are visually impaired would still find lights useful, and even some people who are severely visually impaired can distinguish light from dark.
Even totally blind people would have lights in their homes; even if a house were designed and built explicitly for a blind person, it would probably be a building code violation not to install any lighting (and it would severely limit the resale value of the house). Guests and visitors who are not visually impaired would, of course, need lighting. Also, a totally blind person might leave some lights on or have a timer control certain lights for safety reasons. A house that was always totally dark at night and in the evening might attract intruders.
This isn’t directly addressing your question, but many people who are typically called “blind” actually can have some small degree of vision - they might be able to, for instance, count fingers at a 12" distance from their eyes, or at least notice hand motion at that range, while others might only have some degree of light perception. In those cases, I suspect they would have lamps and use them like a sighted person would.
As for people truly “blind” (no light perception), I’d guess that they would have some lamps around - but probably not on - for when they’d have seeing guests over, or repair people who’d need to fix something inside, but I have no direct experience with this.
My totally blind friend (no light perception at all), lives in the dark unless she knows someone is coming over, and sometimes not even then. More than once she has asked me to read something to her, and I’ve had to ask her to turn on a light so that I could see it. She lives in an apartment which has the usual number of lamps and overhead lights, but she is very frugal with the lightbulbs. Sometimes she’ll have to pull the bulb from one lamp to bring it into the other room and put it in a different lamp. Why keep bulbs everywhere when you don’t need them?
My favorite story about her involves her electric bill. She had apparently gotten behind on it, and received a second notice. When I told her that she needed to pay the bill immediately, she responded, “Why? What are they going to do – turn off my lights?”
I recently read a story about Bill Cosby and Ray Charles. Cosby visited Charles’s hotel room one evening. Naturally, when Cosby entered the room was unlit, and when the door closed, he couldn’t see at all. He said, “Ray, I can’t see. What should I do?” Charles replied, “Turn the lights on, idiot. You need them, I don’t.”
Totally-blind people have no need for lights themselves. The father of a guy I once worked for was blind, and he was famous for doing lawn maintenance in the dark. He would mow (with a push mower) and edge the lawn, and keep the hedges and trees around the house trimmed. Looking at it, you could not tell that a blind person had done it. He did all the regular house-maintenance things other people did themselves. He even hand-sanded and painted the windows. He did tend to get stuff on his hands more and cut them up more often, but he insisted on doing it. He had always been blind and these were things he had always done. His wife was nearly-blind as well.
Also semi-related–he had been stopped by passing police several times at his home because he would be out doing something in his garage in the evening (at night, basically) with no lights on. So they’d stop and ask what was going on, because all they saw was someone was sneaking around in a dark garage.
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It was a streaming video on the front page of AOL a few weeks ago when Cosby was on (I believe) Conan. When Cosby entered the room he witnessed Charles shaving in the dark. Upon Cosby turning on the light, Charles simply said “Do you feel better now?”
I’ve heard a similar story told by Cosby actually so it might be true, but then he is a comedian so who knows. Cosby called on Ray Charles who was sitting in the dark and without thinking asked, “Ray, why are you sitting in the dark?”
If we’re getting into jokes, there’s the one about the time when Ray Charles met Tiger Woods. Ray mentioned that he, too, was an avid golfer. He would have his caddy go to the hole and shout, so that he knew which direction it was. He then suggested that he might play a round against Tiger some time. Tiger asked “Sure, when do you want?” “Pick any night”.
In one of the Sci-Fi mystery novels written by Isaac Asimov, the detective’s sidekick wonders why a blind man would keep the lights on in his home. The man explains : Its for the benefit of my guide dog.
I tend to doubt so much. A blind person doesn’t need a dog to guide him in his own house. Dogs are quite capable of finding their food bowl, etc. in the dark.
I used to work at a clinic that employed a couple of blind folks. The one guy was totally and completely blind.
One day we had some fuses blow and the whole place went dark. The “Eric” then yelled down the hall “Hey, who turned the lights out?”
“Uh… Eric… how do you know the lights are out?”
“My dog is bumping into the walls of my office and whining. If I have to lead my guide dog around it’s gotta be really dark in here.”
Because no one could find a flashlight, and the fusebox was in the back of a closet, we wound up sending “Eric” in to fix the problem under the theory he was the guy least like to hurt himself finding his way through the pitch dark back there.
IIRC, the term ‘legally blind’ refers to a level of visual impairment at which the state classes you as ‘blind’. You may have some visual perception, such as motion, or light, but for legal purposes, eg, driving a car, disability benefits, you are classed as blind.
Usual caveats apply, IANAL, YMMV, varies from country to country
I once made a business call to a house with a blind couple. Two lights were on, a plain white one on one side of the room and a bright red one on the other side. I thought the red light bulb was there because they couldn’t tell what they were screwing into the lamp socket and got a red buld just out of blind bad luck. Then a realized this made no sense because if they couldn’t see the color of the lights, why have any lights on in the first place? So I had to ask about the red bulb.
It turns out they could see degrees of brightness and colors. The red bulb is always on the left side of the living room and this gives them a comforting sense of placement when they’re walking around the house.
