Continuing on with the lighting series, we have some lovely round and airy choices.
I played it cool when we bought our house, asking if the light in the dining room was staying. I recognized it as a Nelson Saucer (#4 above), a light I had always had my eye on. And yes it stayed. A couple of years later, when the original owners came back to see the house, they notice I had moved the light into the living room and remarked that had they known I liked it so much, they would have left the other one they had too, instead of tossing it out (!).
This is the type of light we have above our dining table. That’s really the only place a long, rectangular light makes sense, and they do add a lot of drama to a dining room. I long for that fourth one, though ours is pretty close to number two.
We’ve been using Method for years here. Originally because I saw the line at Target, I liked that their soap bottles were designed by Karim Rashid (hello, I’m a design nerd), and everything smelled nice.
You might think that a green company would be annoyed with a customer like me. People are supposed to choose eco-friendly products out of concern, trying to avoid toxic chemicals with regard to their health and the environmental impact, right? I was buying it because it was pretty. But here’s the thing — Method is a company based on ideals, but they’re also weird and quirky, and they care about design too. I was in San Francisco last week to meet with the team at their headquarters, and I liked the way Eric, one of the co-founders, described themselves:
It’s like if you found out Skittles were good for you.
So sure, everything looks great, but it works and is good for you (and our planet) too. My mother-in-law likes to clip articles for people. She saves things that she wants to share with us, and gives us a stack of photocopies, newspaper clippings, and magazine pages every so often. She recently gave me a roundup of all-purpose cleaners by Cook’s Illustrated. They tested and reviewed nine of the leading cleaners, and Method came out on top as their only “highly recommended” pick. Boom.
And as I said, they were a bit quirky too… Which I dig. We were able to see the behind the scenes making of the Method Clean Happy anthem, and after spending the day with the employees and seeing how passionate and all-around good they are, I really want this video to take off. It’s pretty awesome to watch, too. By the way, those people in the white suits and glasses? Method employees. (That Katie at the birthday party can really bust a move — we saw proof in the outtakes.)
I’ll share a few more of these videos throughout the year as they become available. You’re going to want to see that guy with the guitar sing, trust me.
Method HQ
Everything about my trip to Method’s headquarters was thoughtful, welcoming, and fun. If you want a mini-summit experience for yourself, you can enter to win a trip for two to San Francisco with a visit to Method’s HQ, lunch with the co-founders, and a year’s supply of Method goodies and other surprises. Enter to win (and see the complete list of rules and eligibility) over at Method’s Facebook page.
Continuing on in our lighting miniseries, we have the hanging drum shades. I think these are particularly well-suited to living rooms, but they’re versatile.
A reader recently requested a guide to lighting — specifically, a guide to mixing lighting throughout a home so that it all works together. I started to put together one of my “Let’s” posts, but there were so many styles that I wanted to get to and I couldn’t fit them all in without it getting crazy! So I’ve decided to split the post into a miniseries of lighting roundups, and I’ll show how to mix and match them at the end.
First up are the Sputnik inspired chandeliers. The fifth one here isn’t a perfect fit with the others, but it’s so amazing that I had to include it anyway (and I think it’s at home with the rest).
