Interiors by Design: Lighting the way

Though known for our detailed attention lavished on these particular rooms, American bathrooms and kitchens have always been sorely lacking in beautiful, appropriate and creative lighting fixtures. A squatty fixture plunked overhead or unattractive downlights thrown together were about all we saw back in the Iron Age when I was a young designer.

Thanks to a more sophisticated demand and a shift of focus toward this daily underdesigned utilitarian need, the world of bathroom and kitchen lighting has erupted into a profusion of attentively designed fixtures. No longer do we need to turn to the Dutch, French or Italians for beautiful utilitarian lighting.

But before I showcase the plethora of sound, inventive choices available in surprising plenitude here on the East End, I thought we might examine some simple do’s and don’ts of kitchen and bathroom lighting.

When standing at. the vanity mirror, illumination from wall mounted sconces and a wall mounted overhead effectively frontlight every feature (crevice and furrow) of your face without shadowing the eyes and neck. Be careful with downlights. If placed slightly in back of your head or directly on top, they will shadow your eyes, upper lip and neck lending you a fatigued, vampiric quality. And shining directly atop your head can (as my friend Todd attests to) lend your coif a ghostlike appearance, bouncing light off your scalp and accentuating your maybe already thinning hair a bit too much. If you insist on recessed lighting—place those downlights close (12 inches) to your large mirror so that the reflected light bounces off the mirror, providing a more even front flooding appearance.

In kitchens, I always suggest under counter lighting, which of course illuminates the counters. With today’s very tall kitchens, sometimes reaching 11 feet high or more, I like to add a flush soffit between the upper cabinets and ceiling crown. (I can’t abide that cobweb, basket and corny copperware catch space between the upper cabinets and the ceiling. Too much junk!) On the face of this flush soffit, I add downlighting fixtures, which highlight the beautiful glass fronts of the upper cabinetry and provide strong pools of light atop the front of the counter where most of the tasks of cooking are executed.

When placing downlights in the kitchen I always suggest drawing them close to the upper cabinets to both highlight the cabinet and countertop and to prevent your head shadow from interfering with your work. A fixture above the island is frequently appropriate and if the light spread is not sufficient, then flank it with two down spots, allowing the island counter to glow (especially if it is a beautiful countertop material to highlight, otherwise forget it).

Suffolk Lighting has become quite a phenomenon, casting off its dusty cornball catering hall-lighting purveyor mantle and has plunged headlong into a rather chic, well designed selection of Hamptonian-appropriate lighting. I could have selected at least twelve different sets of sconces for a client’s Shelter Island bathroom—many spawned from the workshops of Visual Comfort, an impressively creative company out of Texas that produces, among many other things, all of Ralph Lauren’s lighting. Now promoting American designer visions, Visual Comfort has come a long way from its Anglophile wannabe inception. In addition to good design, their polished nickel finish is exquisite and their oil-rubbed bronze is a champion. Check out the antique brass finish. It will make you long for the good ole’ days. Suffolk Lighting also showcases hefty, industrial klieg lights mounted on horseshoe shaped armatures which are spot on for kitchens, especially above the island. Most designers are now looking for that particular signature fixture to float above those steroidal kitchen islands. Visual Comfort has adapted these from either the 1920s heavy industrial worklights or perhaps copied from Urban Archaeology’s intensely detailed substantial reproductions. In my book, Urban’s cargo and double prismatic industrial pendants are spectacular, and well worth the price tag.

Lucky we are to have Urban Archaeology located in Bridgehampton. As its name indicates, it was founded during the ’60s to preserve what Washington’s decree of “urban renewal” was wholesale destroying. But once New Yorkers got wise and began to restore rather than obliterate and urban artifacts became scarce, Urban Archeology started reproducing the highest quality bathroom sconces and kitchen fixtures. Countless contractors on the East End will tell you that for long lasting durability, solid metals, excellent plating, salt and weather resistance, Urban’s lighting is the finest—and, some of the only sconces and lanterns that should be installed outside near the ocean. The designs are classic, well proportioned and always solid in feel and appearance.

Stop by English Country in Bridgehampton to sample sconces, swing arms, Dutch style chandeliers and billiard fixtures—mostly displayed in old world brass. They have a wonderful large three-light “billiard fixture” perfect for any island, whose detailing is just ornate enough to take it out of the “you have seen this everywhere” category. The halophane shades are properly dazzling and their waffled diffusers are attractively practical.

Architrove in East Hampton offers up many of my most favorite bathroom sconces because they are so nautically driven without overreaching into the world of kitsch. The Gimbal Sconce, a cabin cruiser kerosene adapted light meant to swing with the rocking of the waves is available in two distinct styles, one more Edwardian in its ornate detail, and one far more contemporary in its sleek deco railway appeal. Their butler silver finish is all the rage because it needs no polishing. Butler silver mellows out better than silver plate, yet takes the nouveau out of polished nickel. Architrove’s caged halophane sconce (Hoodless Bulkhead Sconce) is perfect for children’s bathrooms because they can take rough abuse and the halophane globes can bear higher wattages without shattering. A bit nautical, a bit industrial, a bit modern—what more could one ask? Architrove welcomes customization of their bathroom and kitchen lighting, especially when changing wiring, finishes, glass shades and adapting back plates, etc. Architrove has antiques, reproductions and modern fixtures you will see nowhere else, that’s how unique their collection is.

If the East End’s bathroom and kitchen lighting purveyors have simply not enough selection for you, a number of great suppliers and innovators are well in reach in Manhattan. Hamptons appropriate Remains NYC sell elegant attenuated nickel sconces as well as wonderful Arts and Crafts samplings. O-lampia throws a simple, almost Shaker industrial edge into its kitchen fixtures. Schoolhouse produces milk glass repros from the early 1920s to the bebop ’50s. And finally, Nicholas Antiques (to the trade at the D&D) carries two European lines, Besselink and Jones English and Galerie des Lamps French that are utilitarian yet old-world at the same time—a combination often hard to find in the same product line.

The upshot is, you can no longer despair that neither your kitchen nor bath is either poorly or uninterestingly lit. The design world has squared off with this most mundane of utilitarian challenges—and success has been achieved. Good shopping!

Marshall Watson is a nationally recognized interior and furniture designer who lives and works in the Hamptons and New York City. Reach him at 105 West 72nd Street, Suite 9B, New York, NY 10023.