I grew up in an older (circa 1920s) apartment building in New York City. It was a pretty big apartment (8 rooms, but that didn’t seem so big with Mom, Dad and four kids filling it up).
My memory is that the only room with overhead lighting was the kitchen. Oh, and the bathrooms. But otherwise, it was all lamps. And there were some weird switching arrangements. And weird switches. We didn’t have the usual flip switches – our switches had two separate buttons – one for on, one for off.
I think it was just style. Overhead lighting was consider not as nice as lamps. And really, I still feel that way. Give me a plain old lamp with an incandescent bulb – much nicer than halogen (which is what I have in my new construction apartment building now), LEDs, those new flourescent bulbs that fit in an incandescent socket, and anything else I’ve ever seen.
The main part of my house was built in the early 1950s, and had ceiling lights. Then an addition got put on, without any. No heat either, but it is the Bay Area so it usually isn’t required, and we use our wall heater only a few times a year. I think they were being cheap. They had about 500 kids, and probably needed the space but wanted to cut corners.
The first thing we did when we moved in was to get an electrician to put in ceiling lights in all rooms without them. No switched outlets, thank Og.
Our switched outlets are all the top of the duplex outlet. You can either plug into the switch or a constant outlet. Wiring the outlets this way takes more wire than putting in a ceiling light on a switch. Some people don’t like ceiling lights and don’t want one installed. Our switch can turn on or off all 3 lamps in the living room at once. The outlets are also on a 3 way switch so the room can be lit from any of 3 entrances.
I like over head lights. The ceiling is 5’ 10" tall. Bang head on lights if your tall. My bedroom has a light I clear by a couple inches. Others are not so lucky.
I can’t say I ever saw a bedroom ceiling light that I liked. The quality of the light always seems to be harsh, and it needs to be excessively bright to provide the same amount of useful light that you could get from a table lamp next to you. It looks like a big wart on the ceiling.
I don’t care what anyone says, my shitty apartment (ca. 4 years ago) had a lousy window AC unit (only in the living room), but a ceiling fan (with lightbulb!) in the middle of the master (well, only) bedroom and it was glorious. My current condo, built ca. mid-1990s has no ceiling lights nor fan in the master bedroom. And I hate it. Somehow, the only switched outlet is directly adjacent to the door, which, just take my word for it, is not a good position for a standing floor lamp. The lamps have to go in the far corners, none of the outlets are switched, so I have to stumble through a pitch black room every time I forget to turn on the lamps before sunset. Plus I liked the airflow of a ceiling fan when I was sleeping, now it’s just the central AC that seems to ooze rather than blow cool air.
Besides aesthetics, there are two other possible reasons for the lack of ceiling lights - the first is that, particularly in older buildings of a certain type or those with thatched roofs, the potential fire risk precludes any form of wiring or switchgear within the ceiling area (from an insurance perspective). I have a (fellow architect) friend who lives in a house with a thatched roof where they are not able to have any ceiling mounted lights for this reason.
The more common occurrence of no ceiling lights is in apartment buildings where precast concrete flooring units are used and, to save space and squeeze each storey tighter, no dropped ceilings were formed allowing for cable runs and fitting luminaires. This is generally a budget-led design decision, where all lights will be wall mounted or powered from low level sockets – in larger developments this can potentially allow whole additional floors to be added and still sit within any planning height restrictions, so is well worth it from a developer perspective.
I don’t understand why you assume that everybody wants an overhead light. I’ve been living in my appartment for 8 months. I’m currently sitting in the bedroom, but can’t see the ceiling. And I don’t even know if there’s a fixture for an overhead light here. Probably. I forgot because I never use overhead lights in a bedroom. I have a lamp for the bed, another for the desk, an halogen lamp for the whole room if needed, which is much better than an overhead light since you can change the orientation and the power.
Isn’t it possible that the room was build with an overhead light, and the owners removed the fixtures? If you don’t want the overhead light, you don’t want the electric cable hanging from the ceiling, and you have no use for the switch on the wall. If I were the owner, I would probably remove those things. Although the cable would still be running in the wall and ceiling, you couldn’t know it.
I’m a lifelong renter and it has always been one of the first pains in the ass to get all the outlet-controlling light switches locked so that they can never be turned off. Because I almost never want to plug a lamp into whatever outlet they’ve pre-determined should be where I want a lamp.
We moved a couple months ago and the new place (build int he '50s I believe) has ceiling lighting in every room. It’s glorious to not have littered my apartment with a dozen lamps so that I see wherever I might be in the apartment. Yes, I still have a couple nightstand lamps in the bedroom for when I need light but not the overhead light, but that is relatively rare.
I’d say that 80% of the time I’m in the bedroom and want light, I want full room light, not a lamp.
Of course, as a tradeoff for that gloriousness the only coaxial outlet for cable was in the kitchen for some reason.
An awful lot of hotels don’t have an overhead light in the main area, although they have one in the entrance hallway. Does anyone know why they are set up that way? There is an overhead light, so it’s not as if the builders were averse to that idea.
I find it really annoying when I can’t get the hotel room that bright. I need to do work, and I can’t see.
I know a lot of people who simply despise overhead lights. My ex wife hated them and would light all rooms with lamps whenever possible.
I have no problem with them but some people do. It seems perfectly reasonable to me that it was a matter of fashion, just as stainless steel appliances were all the rage for awhile despite being harder to care for.
it is good to have task lighting; lamps/lights at nightstands, desks, counters.
also good is a navigational light; ceiling or indirect light from a lamp. people often think that direct light, enough to light the room, from a ceiling light is harsh. indirect (reflected) light on ceiling/wall is more pleasant.
I can’t stand overhead light. It’s harsh and unpleasant, and the last thing that says “happy home” to me is a naked bulb constantly hovering at the top of my field of vision. And it’s even worse in the bedroom, where you get the pleasure of staring right up in to it.
In the day, I prefer good old fashioned sunlight from the window. In the evening, it’s a mix of indirect and task lighting. It honestly never occurred to me that that fifteen seconds it takes to turn on the lights is at a hardship.
