October, 1915 
21 
LIGHTING THE NEW HOUSE AND THE OLD 
The Outlets to Provide for Attaching Household Appliances—Proper Positions tor Fixtures—Wiring 
and Piping the Old House 
CLARA BROWN LYMAN 
S INCE it does 
not neces- 
s a r i 1 y involve 
a technical 
lighting knowl¬ 
edge, the prob¬ 
lem of artificial 
lighting is not 
difficult for the 
layman to un¬ 
derstand. It de¬ 
pends upon a 
general knowl¬ 
edge of what is 
right and wrong- 
in lighting; what 
has been accom¬ 
plished in fix¬ 
ture and lamp 
design; and it 
means, above 
all, comprehen¬ 
sion of the nec¬ 
essity of laying- 
out the lighting- 
scheme at the 
time the plans 
are drawn. 
Otherwise, 
when the house 
is completed the 
family is apt to discover, as time goes 
on, that a light here and there is in the 
wrong place, that there are not enough 
lights and apparently no way to pro¬ 
vide for more; that there is no place 
to attach a labor-saving device with¬ 
out temporarily dismantling a lighting 
fixture. 
It is for these reasons that a well 
thought out lighting plan prepared at 
the beginning will save trouble and ex¬ 
pense later on; for, although errors 
are nowadays not impossible to remedy 
after the house is built, it is naturally 
more expensive to correct mistakes 
than it is to avoid them. 
The first important part of any 
lighting plan is to provide for plenty 
of outlets, whether for gas or elec¬ 
tricity, and in this connection the pos¬ 
sibilities of modern gas illumination 
should be understood. 
It is not generally known that pip¬ 
ing for gas in a modern house is en¬ 
tirely concealed; that there are fioor 
and baseboard outlets for it exactly as 
there are for electricity and that it can 
be used with the new methods of 
illumination. 
It therefore does not matter which 
of the modern illuminants one plans 
to use, plenty of 
outlets will be less 
costly in the end 
than a few. In 
the first place, 
no matter what 
modern lighting 
method one de¬ 
cides to install in 
his house, it 
should always be 
possible to use a 
portable lamp in 
any part of the 
room without be¬ 
ing obliged to dis¬ 
figure the room 
by cords or pipes 
running across 
the ceiling from a 
central fixture 
and down the 
wall to a table. 
Unless the room 
has plenty of out¬ 
lets, the family is 
obliged to congre¬ 
gate in a fixed 
place to do their 
reading because 
otherwise it 
is cpiite possible that only in one spot 
in the room can the table lamp be con¬ 
veniently attached to a fixture. 
With plenty of outlets, more than 
one lamp can be used in the same room 
at the same time. This provision like¬ 
wise does away with the necessity of 
turning out the overhead fixture when 
the portables are being used. 
Plenty of outlets offer the additional 
advantage of attaching any portable 
cooking or labor-saving device that it 
is desired to use in the room, and so 
be able to use the device and the lights 
at the same time without dismantling 
a fixture. 
A discussion of one or two of the 
most used rooms in the average house 
will illustrate these points. 
The living-room, for example, being 
the family gathering place, should be 
provided with both general and local 
lighting because it must be made to 
serve many purposes. Sometimes 
merely a soft mellow glow to visit by 
is all that is desired. Again, reading, 
studying and sewing are often going 
on in the room at the same time, and 
this requires local lighting by table 
lamps in addition to the general illum¬ 
ination of the room. Now suppose 
In a living-room there should be plenty of baseboard and floor outlets so that table 
lamps can be used in addition to overhead illumination. Note the baseboard connec¬ 
tion for the piano lamp 
Arrange to have lights on each side of the 
mirror in the bathroom 
