Asian-inspired lighting is a difficult thing to define:  is it pagoda-shaped lights, is it rice-paper, is it colorful or muted, can you have an Asian-inspired look without changing all of your furniture?  Asian-inspired lighting is simple:  it is based on the idea that your home is a sanctuary. 

What Asian-inspired is not: The Asian-inspired home is not about placing Buddha statues all over the place and burning incense.  It is not about those little “lucky bamboo” plants (which are not actually bamboo, but most often a member of the Dracaena family—e.g., a tropical house plant).    It is not about fake “antique” Chinese lacquer chests full of old junk (a vendor once told me they beat the chests they import with chains before putting them out on the floor so they look more antique). 

What is Asian-inspired decor?  The Asian-inspired home is a place of peace and of prosperity.  Peace is a given: if Home is not peaceful, you simply will not be happy.  Prosperity is a more interesting word to look at.  Home is the center of life:  your prosperity is affected by the state of your home.  Think of prosperity as something beyond money alone:  prosperity is being thriving.  Your home should be the home of someone that is thriving—someone who is living well, thriving, and has peace.  By extension, the lighting used in Asian-inspired environments must be peaceful and inspiring of prosperity. 

 Now, the time for the shameless plug:  this is why I love our lights.  So many lights you find in stores are full of unnecessary doo-dads and distractions.  Our lights simply light —with a calm, simple peacefulness that makes you feel good.  I’ve put together a couple of looks that illustrate how you can bring in an Asian-inspired look with a light (see above).  Try these out to start with, and add you own special touches!

Today I released some new and awesome fabrics to choose from for our light fixtures. Geranium is among these, and even though summer is coming to an end, it is smashing to know that we can still bring in the robust color of a Geranium all year long.

I love this photo of a Geranium on Flickr—the color is soft and vibrant at the same time.

This is a vast collection of Pink Geraniums on Flickr also (I don’t want to grab those images and embed them here, as they don’t belong to me–go have a look at this marvelous collection!).

Before I released this color, I paired it in the studio with our Madeline Stripe trim—the chocolate really makes it sophisticated. It looks awesome:

Geranium also is fun with our Jennifer Stripe—-it is VERY colorful, but perfect for a children’s room, or a fro-yo stand, or a chocolate shop:

One of the cool new features we have introduced on our growing site is our gallery pages. In about 15 seconds, you can create a gallery online where you can keep your designs. I love this: how many times have I played with some cool online tool, just to lose the work I did and have to recreate it later? We have put in the tool to prevent this. You can even post it to Digg or wherever you want, really quickly.

It is a new tool, and I have to admit, we’ve not publicized it too much: I would rather wait and see where things may need to be improved upon or tweaked, but now, I have to say, it might be time to show it off more. We’ve been running it on the site for about a month, and it has been a lot of fun. I don’t believe there is anything like it anywhere online.

I’ve been secretly hoping that you all will find it to be as fun as I do: playing with the designs and giving them fun names is part of the joy in the process. I like to think we are like ColourLovers but with real things. It is not about what I like or what a product designer likes—-it is all about what YOU like and need.

Check out Pirro’s lighting fixture gallery - he or she had fun one night naming lamp shades. Very silly, and very very cool Pirro!

Have you created a fun new gallery that you would like me to blog about? Just comment here and I’ll go have a look!

Cheers for now dahlings!

We are in an exciting time: technology is allowing us to offer limitless combinations on our lights. More exciting: we can (on most items) show you exactly what your light will look like!

I have always been excited about being able to offer our customers something unique. You may be able to find a white linen pendant light at T*****, but can you change the length, or get a stem, or change the cord color, or change the fabric, or get help choosing it, or call for help when installing it, or get warranty service? The answer with us to all of these is “Yes!” - and now, you can actually SEE what it will look like with the help of our partners at Scene7.

If you are wondering what happened to the SOD that used to be here: she doesn’t live here anymore. It takes a lot of time to produce daily—it is more than just slapping up a picture and a link. We have to look at figures, take stock of the inventory we have on hand, code pages to work with the SOD, etc., etc. The other thing about the SOD is that it narrowly focused on one particular item—and what we do is so very broad—-focusing on one small item—a tiny choice-set—is antithetical to who we are. We offer limitless choice with unquestionable quality, delivered accurately and quickly—that is our dearest committment, and frankly, a daily challenge not to be taken lightly.

So, if you are a current customer and have a question for me, post it here. If you are thinking about becoming one, post it. If you are just a random web visitor, post it. I will respond!