Picking Some Lights Sticker Shock

Over two days, we spent about 7.5 hours looking at lighting and making some decisions. We didn’t quite get to everything, but when we finished the second meeting, on our last day of the trip, we felt we were in pretty good shape.

possible light

To give us some guidance on our lighting choices, we had engaged Alessandra to help us. Off we went, joined by Kevin, to a lighting supply store.

Oh, my! It was a nice store, full of samples hanging everywhere, and my first reaction was that no one would ever buy any of it. It looked like just a bunch of unsold inventory. Both Anne and I had our doubts whether this was going to be a fruitful visit.

We were looking for 27 different types of lights, not counting where we were going to use the same light in multiple locations.

Slowly, we started to identify a few lights that might be right or that gave us some guidance for what to look for in the catalogs.

We spent quite a bit more time looking at catalogs than floor samples. One limitation of this approach, which we realized later, is that the floor samples were tagged with a price, so we knew what we would be spending. The catalog items were shown without prices.

Predictably, when the costs were totaled, we came in too high, probably 40% above what we expected. The only good news is that most of the overage was caused by just a few high-priced lights, so if we can find replacements for those we may be able to get the costs back in line.

We started our search for alternatives the next afternoon during our flight home. Anne was able to find lights she liked, but from US sources, and since the electrical system in Italy uses a different voltage and frequency, we can’t use US lights there.

So we’re looking at amazon.it and other sources, from which we may be able to have items shipped to Kevin for storage until needed.

Source:
Light: Amazon.it | https://www.amazon.it/Claxy-Lampada-sospensione-industriale-cucina/dp/B01CJK3T8S/ref=sr_1_273?s=lighting&ie=UTF8&qid=1500565162&sr=1-273&keywords=chandelier

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