Video: Choosing The Best Lighting For Your Home

OAKLAND — Host, Sarah Rutan: Are you ready to update the lighting in your home? First, you’ll want to understand all of your options. So today we’re in Oakland with Diamond Certified Expert Contributor Dan Pitcock of Roberts Electric Company to learn more.

Expert Contributor, Dan Pitcock: You may be considering updating the lighting in your home to provide you more functionality in different areas of the house or light or do whatever you are considering.

There are four types in general: the traditional incandescent, it’s the most clunky I would say and the most less energy efficient than the other styles. There is the MR 16 which is usually a four inch aperture. We really like that because it is really flexible. The light bulbs come in many different beam spreads and wattage’s, really good for different types of lighting throughout the house.

For general lighting you can go to compact fluorescent. Compact fluorescent, obviously good energy efficiency, color in it is much better than it used to be, but its more of a general light, not so functional for adapting to specifics and then LED is the most energy efficient and the technology is changing rapidly. Its becoming much more affordable, the types of light bulbs you’ll see for LED you can get good color entering as well through the array I should say, not through the light bulb.

If you’re going to dim those, you should consider either a toggle switch or a paddle decor style. If you have a location in your home where you have always wanted to dim across the room but don’t want to pay for the cost of wiring, we now have wireless switching which allows you to put a little battery operated radio receiver on the other side of the room, put the proper style dimmer in and now you’ve got dimming control from both sides of the room.

Host, Sarah Rutan: To learn more from local, top-rated companies visit our Diamond Certified Expert Reports at experts.diamondcertified.org.