Bright Idea with Philips Lighting

This is a sponsored post written by me on behalf of Philips Lighting

Here in Wisconsin the winters are long and cold. While I love the dark for more reasons than just putting my kids to bed a little earlier it is very difficult to entertain people in the complete dark. Why am I in the complete dark? Well… apparently at the time our house was built the designer didn’t think lights were necessary in the ceiling. What is a girl to do? Buy lamps obviously. Lots and lots of lamps. To be quite honest we lived the first few months in this house with only the daylight which wasn’t too bad since it didn’t get dark until around 8:30, but now it’s dark at 4:30. You can see my problem right?

 So when Philips Lighting contacted me about doing a post on Lighting for the holidays as part of their Bright Idea Sweepstakes I was beyond excited! Finally a reason to make myself go buy some lamps! Now remember, I have no lights in my ceiling… at all, so I needed bright lights in my lamps, but you don’t want to put too much wattage in there. So I took a look at all the light bulbs Philips sent me, and decided to go with the 19 watt bulb that is equivalent to a 100 watt bulb. That baby lights up my living room! : )

My favorite part though, while the light is very bright and makes it feel like daytime (while pitch black outside), it’s not a harsh light at all. Let’s take a look at the before and after so you can see what I’m talking about.

It’s like the light goes around things. You can see it really well on the wall between the curtains and the righ tside of the dresser. Notice how much more light gets around. This is at night time too. There is absolutely no other lights on and no flash on my camera. This is all LED lighting in the after picture! You can see it in the lampshade too! It’s just a flood of beautiful naturally feeling light!

So usually when we have people over everyone congregates in the kitchen dining area, which isn’t a very big space. Especially when you consider all our friends have a lot of kids and we are all in this small area with two whole couches open. Why? Because we can’t see each other! Now we can! At least when the designers who thought lights were unnecessary in the ceiling did wire the top outlets in the living room to a switch so I can even switch these babies on and off from the wall instead of turning each on separately. Has my laziness reached an all level high or should I be super excited about this? lol

A little something I have learned over time is that putting mirrors in room not only makes it feel bigger, but it also helps disperse the light. So I placed this little gold mirror right behind the lamp and it really helps pull the light across that side of the room, especially opposite my Christmas Tree.

One might think that lamps aren’t necessary during the day. Wow… I didn’t realize how much they help when reading to my daughter during the day. Even though we get pretty good natural light I realized I was still straining a little to read. Now that I have a lamp right next to my favorite spot on the couch it really helps eliminate unwanted shadows and just gives you a clearer picture!

 Did you know too that these Philips LED lights are supposed to last 20+ years. If that’s true I will be one happy lady! After moving 4 times in 2 years I am fairly certain we have a curse on light bulbs… every house we move to, every.single.light bulb burns out! It’s crazy… and kinda creepy! So I am looking forward to not having to change out light bulbs until after my kids graduate high school! : ) We have slowly been incorporating these light bulbs all over our house. It has helped tremendously  in the kitchen and dining areas! I can’t believe how clear and crisp the light from these bulbs are.

Ready for some exciting news? Philips is running a Bright Ideas Sweepstakes right now for a $3,000 lighting makeover! Lighting helps the feel of your room so much, so I can’t even image how much more awesome your house would look with that kind of makeover! : ) The sweepstakes involves creating your own lighting pinboard. So basically you get to play around on Pinterest for the chance at an awesome makeover! Yes please! : )

Have you tried LED lights? What do you think of them?