Low Energy Supplies and Services is still offering free home energy consultations to people around Ballarat, Victoria or in Adelaide, South Australia. With your free booking they will send a consultant to your house to work out what you need to do to increase your energy efficiency.

They will look at how you can save money in three different areas:

• Power
• Gas
• Water

In addition to telling you how you can save money in those three areas they will also supply you with free energy-saving light bulbs and water-saving shower heads. They will also install them all for free.

The free consultations can be found here:

• Ballarat Save and Raise
• Live Green – Adelaide

When we were choosing the lighting for our master bedroom we had a lot to consider. There are two types of lighting that you need to consider when choosing your lighting options. They are:

1. Work / Task Lighting
2. Ambient Lighting

Work / Task Lighting

Typically your work / task lighting can be found in one, two or possibly three locations in the master bedroom. We have task lighting in only one location, but it would probably be nice to have it in the other two as well. The main locations for task / work lighting in a bedroom, in order of prominence, are:

1. Bedside Tables
2. Dresser Mirror
3. Closet

We have reading lamps on our bedside tables. In purchasing these lights we went for a 45watt light that matched our bed set on each bedside. I have also seen the reading lamps mounted to the wall above the headboard for the bed, which can be quite effective.

Some dresser mirrors have lights built into them. This can help with getting dressed and ready for the day. Since we have an ensuite attached to our master bedroom we didn’t really have a need for lights for the mirror on our dresser.

Having lighting in the closets is something that I am starting to see more of. Once it was something reserved to walk in closest, but now you can find built in lighting in standard closets. I’ve seen closet lights can be attached to the wall, in the ceiling or sometimes attached to the shelves in the wardrobe.

Ambient Lighting

The ambient lighting in the master bedroom is your general lighting. We’ve had the ambient lighting provided by wall light scones, a light attached to the fan, inset in the ceiling or more traditional ceiling lights. If done properly the ambient lighting can be used to really “set the mood” in the master bedroom.

My favourite lights that we’ve had for ambient lighting in our bedroom so far was halogen down lights on a dimmer.

There were four lights evenly spaced in the ceiling around a ceiling fan. The placement of the lights helped to stop the flicker that can sometimes being experienced with a ceiling fan. Being on a dimmer allowed the same lights to be used for a wide variety of uses.

What kind of choices have you made in setting up your own lighting in your master bedroom? What have I missed in planning out bedroom lighting?

Right now you can get free energy saving light bulbs in Victoria and New South Wales. There is no maximum number of lightbulbs to replace, but you need to replace a minimum of three.

The energy saving light bulbs are available for free because the company that replaces the original light bulbs with energy saving light bulbs gets paid for the carbon emissions saved by installing the energy saving light bulbs.

You can apply for your free light bulbs at the following web-site:

• Low Energy Supplies and Services

The company that is providing the free light bulbs is approved as “Greenhouse Friendly” by the Australian government, so it looks legit. You need to book a visit from one of their “installers” to get the bulbs for free, but as long as all they are doing is installing the energy saving lightbulbs, then it hopefully won’t be too much hastle.

If you live in Sydney and don’t want to bother with the hastle of an installer then check out this offer, which can let you pickup five free energy saving lightbulbs. (Please note that as of 2011 this free offer is no longer valid.)

Source: http://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/3180

Tags: energy saving light bulbs