I bought a house not long ago. It was built early 1960’s. All of the bedrooms light switches* do not control the ovehead lights, but switched outlets.** A neighbor told me that originally there were no ovehead lights and some previous owners added fans (which has pullstrings).
Now, I am familiar with the idea of switched outlets, but I don’t exactly understand the reasoning behind them. I have heard that switched outlets are cheaper than overhead lights, but I don’t exactly see how this makes sense. You still have to wire up the switch to something and the cost of an overhead light fixture is pretty low compared to the cost of the house. I mean, those guys installed a frackin’ cast iron tub in the batroom that weighs more than a mini-car full of a dozen clowns. Why didn’t they cheap out on that?
In other words, there seems to be many ways that builders could “shave off a few bucks”, with it being less noticable than the fact the house is impossible to light up. Why did they do this?
Any ideas?
Not an accurate name in this case
** I did not realize this before I bought it. It is easy to miss. Either you walk into a room that is already lit or if the light switch does not turn on the overhead light, you walk over and pull the light string on the fan (with the prsumption that pull string and light switch both need to be on).
No cite, but I think it was more the “fashion” of home building at that time. Overhead lights were disliked and lighting by lamps was the trend. I lived in some college apaprtments built in the early 70’s that had no overhead lights in the common living areas – which sucks when you are a broke college kid who doesn’t own a lamp.
Similarily ceiling fans were all the rage to update your home with 20 years ago as we got into our first house, no so much now. See also those full ceilings of flourescent lights in the kitchen, which was a 70ish fashion. Now granite countertops are all the rage, 20 years from now there will probably be a bustling business of removing them for whatever is considered fashionable at that point.
I don’t think it’s the price. Even a hundred bucks is pretty trivial in contrast to the price of a house. I’m guessing that** rainy** is correct, and it just became a trend for awhile. Some ceiling fixtures are certainly “dated” and not something I would want in a certain type of house.
Yes, but they could also save a few bucks by not installing a doorknob. At some point a decision is made that saving money is not advantageous in all circumstances.
So at some point, a builder said, “it will be acceptable to our buyers to not include overhead lights.” I don’t think that would fly today, so I am guessing there was some kind of cultural shift (as described by rainy)?
What baffles me is that it is VERY difficult to make one switched outlet effectively light up a room. I am not sure how this preference ever got off the ground.
it depends on the purpose of the room. rooms do need to have a light that is easily switched (within reach of the doorway) when entering the room, either light fixtures or a switched receptacle, this is required by the electrical code.
a ceiling light is for room navigation or room use. it doesn’t have a useful effect though it has a feeling of alert awakeness.
in a bedroom where you might like a reading task light these would be a nearby lamp. you might also have a lower wattage table lamp(s) for ambient light. bedrooms tend to softer lit places.
also when your on the bed looking up a ceiling light fixture might be distracting to a person’s field of vision.
The house I used to own had overhead lights on the first floor but not on the second floor. I just assumed they didn’t want to run the wires all the way up to the attic. It was an old house, so all of the electricity was added long after it was built, so I figured they just went with the cheapest, least disruptive option, which was to stop all electricity at knee height on the second floor.
I think it’s a style thing, as was said. Our house was built in the 60s, and we had the same thing. No overhead lights anywhere except the kitchen and bathroom, and wall outlets controlled by switches. I just this spring installed ceiling fans in the bedrooms to fix the problem (and also help our wimpy little window A/C units on hot days - works great!), and I put can lights in the living room a few years ago. It’s a huge improvement, IMHO.
It’s still VERY common not to have overhead lights in bedrooms and it really isn’t a cost function. Some of the most prominent architects in the world won’t use ANY ceiling mounted lighting in bedrooms or general living spaces, they have a thing about unbroken ceilings. In higher end construction you MIGHT see a pretty chandelier or some over bed reading lights but recessed ceiling lights are awfully harsh for bedrooms. The indirect lighting provided by appropriate table or floor lamps is better suited for bedrooms ( in my humble but professional opinion ) unless the room serves a secondary purpose – such as an office-- where more task lighting might be required. Even then you would want directed task lights not general ceiling cans.. ceiling cans are a horrible lighting choice for bedrooms unless they are tightly directed on individual pieces of furniture such as a dresser or table. Wall sconces are my favorite choice for permanently installed bedroom lighting as they give nice indirect lighting via ceiling bounce.
Our house was built in the early eighties and does not have any ceiling lights. However, all the ceilings are vaulted so it’s really not practical. All the bedrooms have wall sconces and the kitchen has some under cabinet lighting. There is a chandelier style light over the kitchen table, but that whole area still seems a little dark.
As a guy who has converted a couple dozen ‘lamp outlets’ to ceiling lights I would really like to get my hands around the neck of whomever is making this fashion choice for homeowners. A switch that controls a single outlet dramaticaly reduces the options for furniture arrangement in a home–the bed has to be near one of the wall outlets that is NOT controlled by the light switch, and nothing else (TV, PC, blender, whatever) can be put in that switched outlet because it gets powered off when the switch gets flipped. That’s just balls. Your bedside lamp and alarm clock/phone charger are plugged into an always hot outlet near the bed, so you’re limited there, and god help you if you want to arrange your room so that the TV or your computer need to access the power that is controlled by the lightswitch. Anyone who doesn’t see the problem here needs to have kids walking into a room and flipping the switch on them.
Also, apart from the master bedroom, other bedrooms are going to be for kids or maybe used as offices. Both pretty much need the even lighting provided by a simple ceiling fixture and fully functional, always hot, wall outlets, and nobody gives a fashion damn about unbroken ceilings in bedrooms. People in a bedroom want predictable power outlets that they can plug a bedside lamp into, harsh but even overhead lighting to help with cleaning or playing, and a goddamned ceiling fan.
Maybe there is my answer. Apparently proffessionals have decided that I don’t need any decent light in there because I am not working in there. Or something. I’m not quite sure.
Maybe it is one of those gulfs that appear between “what looks nice” vs. “I actually have to live here.”
My 1968 house came without overhead lights in the bedrooms, and with neither overhead lights nor switched outlets in the living room. I prefer switched outlets because it’s impossible to beat the light quality of a halogen torchiere. What I’ve done is rewired the house so every outlet is a quad- the one on the left is an always hot standard outlet, the one on the right is a Lutron “dimmable” outlet, controlled by a wall dimmer.
The first house I remember living in was half of a duplex in Long Beach that my great-grandmother bought in 1939; exactly when it was built I’m not sure, but it could have been as far back as the '20s. It had overhead lights built into the ceilings of the bedrooms controlled by a switch on the wall.
The house in Westminster where we moved when I was eight, built in the 1960s, had no overhead lights in the bedrooms, but had wall switches controlled sockets, ostensibly where we were supposed to plug in floor or nightstand lamps. I never plugged a lamp in the socket in my room, so the wallswitch near my bedroom door was functionally useless. :smack:
After you strangle the contractor can I kick his butt?
I’m the poor slob that had to convert my switched bedroom outlets to ceiling fans with lights. We’re trying to save money on the AC bill and keep the temp set at 77. Ceiling fans make that possible.
It’s a lot of work cutting sheetrock, rewiring, patching sheetrock, and repainting the whole room. I did it myself and cursed the original contractor with every breath I took. I had three bedrooms to do. Took me two months working evenings after work.
Likewise. My parents had a house custom-built in 1968; the only overhead lights in that house were in the bathroom, kitchen, and dining room (a chandelier).
7 years after we moved into that house, we moved from Illinois to Wisconsin, into another house built in the same year. That house had overhead lights in all of the bedrooms.
