Busty Beacons. Pectoral Phosphorescence.
October 31, 2022 11:32 AM   Subscribe

This post was deleted for the following reason: Poster's Request -- loup



 
Decades ago I was promised glowing ceilings.

Boob lights are good at keeping bugs out, IME - much better than most of the fancier hanging diffusers. Now that bulbs last longer I’d have to take down other glass just to clean it.

One problem, maybe, is that the whole boob-light market is defined by cheapness, but the expensive-light market expects tall ceilings. It would be more interesting to have more kinds of fixtures suitable for flush mounts in code-minimum rooms. I went looking for something really light (or extremely well anchored) to put over a bed in earthquake country, and there was so little that I’m going to get a paper lantern or parasol or something.
posted by clew at 11:43 AM on October 31, 2022 [5 favorites]


Never heard the term "boob light" before, but the first thing I did when I moved into my last place was replace all the fake brass/gold trim boob lights with something a bit more contemporary and LED bulbs, it was hands down the the cheapest/easiest upgrade in the whole house.
posted by furtive at 11:55 AM on October 31, 2022 [3 favorites]


The term for materials like these is builder grade, an inexpensive construction solution, as long as you're not the one living with it.

This is exactly the problem. Why is a builder's convenience being considered over the needs of the eventual users of the building? A ceiling light mounted in the center of a room is the least useful lighting option for anything other than bare-bones general illumination.

I've got a boob light as the only built-in lighting in my kitchen, which means that you're always working in your own shadow unless you add your own lighting (a significant challenge in a rental property that you can't really alter). Why isn't actually-useful task lighting the default? Even inexpensive under-cabinet LED strips would be miles better. Arrgh.
posted by Greg_Ace at 11:57 AM on October 31, 2022 [14 favorites]


Decades ago I was promised glowing ceilings.

My bathroom has a drop ceiling. A few years ago I replaced the sole florescent tube troffer in there with a completely flat 4'x2' replacement LED. The diffuser is perfect and in that small of a space it's practically a glowing ceiling.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 12:09 PM on October 31, 2022 [1 favorite]


This article contradicts my memory and though I am more than willing to defer to others these days about things I remember this one...nope. El cheapo light fixtures that I remember had a deformed square glass shade hanging from a center screw from a fixture that had two bulbs back to back. A step up were the ubiquitous circular prismatic kitchen ceiling fixtures sometimes a circular fluorescent, lenses held in place by 3 set screws around the perimeter of the chrome base. Next up were the generic white glass domes, vaguely descendent of the "school house" fixtures rehabilitated in the 90's. Boob lights...I never saw one till at least the mid late 90s. The are everywhere now, synonymous with sheet rock shacks everywhere. Maybe boob lights have been around forever but the current ubiquity is something new and dreadful.

Article had some good bits: "Builders also loved installing flat-mount light fixtures newfangled concrete-based homes because they didn't have to install hardware in the concrete ceiling." Is somewhat febrile and I love the name of the lighting "manufacturer" Rich Brilliant Willing as a call to sharpen pitchforks,
posted by Pembquist at 12:14 PM on October 31, 2022 [11 favorites]


FWIW, I'm in the midst of a renovation now (actually two renovations, one of which just completed) and it doesn't seem like "boob lights" are the default anymore. Even cheap builders know that they're, well, cheap.

What seems to have replaced them are LED or CFL recessed "can lights", the kind that go into a hole you cut in the drywall. Recessed lights used to be fairly expensive, because with incandescent bulbs they needed to have a lot of heat shielding and insulation to not be a fire hazard. I gather that in the 1980s they were sort of a 'premium' design element even.

But the modern ones, which dictate only integrated LEDs or CFL bulbs, don't have to handle as much heat, and are much easier to install and require less space above the drywall for safety.

The ones I recently had installed in my kitchen consist of 3 "puck" lights and one AC adapter / driver unit, which goes nearby and is wired into the 120V circuit. The power flowing to the "pucks" is low-voltage DC. The pucks are installed by cutting a hole using an included template, pushing them and their wiring up and into the hole, and then turning a few screws so that some legs flip out on the upper side of the drywall and hold them in place. A thin snap-on bezel then covers the screws and any remaining gap between the drywall and the light fixture itself. Easy, cheap, efficient.

We went from one "boob light" in the center of our ceiling to about 9 of these LED pucks placed strategically over the countertop, sink, and stove areas, and the biggest cost was actually having the hole from the old boob light patched up and then the whole ceiling repainted. Total wattage is about the same, and with them all turned on it's bright enough to conduct vascular surgery, if you wanted to.
posted by Kadin2048 at 12:16 PM on October 31, 2022 [10 favorites]


All the rooms in my childhood home had vestigial ceiling boobs where the gas fixtures used to be.
posted by slkinsey at 12:22 PM on October 31, 2022 [5 favorites]


Central lighting is excellent for getting around while using the fewest Joules. If it's "basic" that's because it's such a good primary option environmentally/economically speaking. Yeah for specific tasks you may want supplemental lighting sources, but a low profile central light source ought to remain the primary light for a whole lot of rooms.
posted by Easy problem of consciousness at 12:22 PM on October 31, 2022 [2 favorites]


I have but one boob light in my house and I installed it myself. I do, however, have about the dang ugliest hanging fixture in the dining room but the replacement I want is absurdly expensive.
posted by bz at 12:23 PM on October 31, 2022


The only two boob lights in the house have been replaced since we moved in a year ago. I informed my wife of my intent to rid the house of our "boob lights" and got a super strange look until I pointed them out hovering in the hallway & laundry room and got "I always hate those lights" as a response.
posted by djseafood at 12:30 PM on October 31, 2022 [2 favorites]


Yeah for specific tasks you may want supplemental lighting sources, but a low profile central light source ought to remain the primary light for a whole lot of rooms.

I mostly don't disagree, but when it's the sole preinstalled lighting in, for instance, a kitchen (as it invariably is, at least in most of the properties I've ever lived in), that's a corner cut too far. Certain rooms absolutely need more than basic "getting around using the fewest Joules".
posted by Greg_Ace at 12:34 PM on October 31, 2022 [2 favorites]


Still don't have an issue with these. You know what the new builder grade is though? These flat circular LED plate things. When they eventually burn out, you can't find them in the hardware store, and you have to unwire and rewire a new one in. Had to call in an electrician to replace them with functional light bulb sockets. I suppose if you were an engineer you could easily think that you can come up with a design with far fewer parts that costs less, but it makes it inaccessible to the average household.
posted by ockmockbock at 12:44 PM on October 31, 2022 [6 favorites]


If you're on Pinterest, there are a gabillion hits for "DIY flush mount light makeover".
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 12:47 PM on October 31, 2022 [1 favorite]


Never heard the term "boob light" before

I heard them called a "Ceiling Tit" by a contractor but that doesn't roll off the tongue as nicely
posted by AzraelBrown at 12:49 PM on October 31, 2022 [3 favorites]


My washrooms have whatever the LED equivalent of a boob light is because I had my house built custom and that meant having to make a choice about pretty much everything in the house and by the time we got to lighting the washrooms my spouse and I didn't care enough to make a choice anymore. It is really stupid that I'll have to replace the unit whenever it dies. They say they're supposed to last 20 years but I somehow doubt it'll last that long. It might be a fun project to try to replace just the LED whenever that happens but I don't trust myself not to end up burning the house down if I were to try such a thing (I'll stick with LEDs powered by AA batteries thank you very much).
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 1:03 PM on October 31, 2022


Our ca 2013 house came outfitted with boob lights in nearly every space. I've been slowly replacing them as time goes by. For laughs, I put one I had replaced on this spring's yardsale for 25 cents and it didn't sell. And when I took my yardsale leftovers to the charity donation shop, they refused it because they never sell and they wind up having to dispose of them.
posted by msbutah at 1:04 PM on October 31, 2022 [2 favorites]


I suppose if you were an engineer you could easily think that you can come up with a design with far fewer parts that costs less, but it makes it inaccessible to the average household.

In theory those lights shouldn't need to be replaced. LEDs shouldn't "burn out" like incandescents and even though those lights are more difficult to replace, the reduced complexity combined with the lack of maintenance should be a net benefit.

I am a little disappointed by how crappy LEDs have become. I used to think a burned out LED was extremely rare or a sign that it had been improperly installed. Now it's almost become normalized that LEDs need to be replaced.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 1:13 PM on October 31, 2022 [4 favorites]


Decades ago I was promised glowing ceilings.

This is obtainable now and for not much more than 15-20 dollars a square foot for the fixtures plus installation. With the caveat that they are installed via tbar so you would have to be amicable to that esthetic (ie a network of frames span the space) ( though you can go pretty fancy with wood (faux or real) tbar) and that even though you get 0-10v dimming at that price many fixtures have minimums of around 10% and 10% of an entire ceiling at a typical 10w per square foot is a lot of light.
posted by Mitheral at 1:15 PM on October 31, 2022


Pembquist, your memory of the timeline matched mine, but "since the 1990s" is easily the entire working life of someone meeting middle age…

Those squarish melty center-pole diffusers were possibly the worst, though. As cheaply made as the boobs and perfect traps for bugs and dust, which bulb heat could burn on to the glass. Ick.

They were the cheap-as-possible echo of "slipper light" glass, all the factories for which were ?repurposed in WWII? There’s a reproduction hardware store in Port Townsend with a nice little annotated collection of them in the upstairs, and here’s an online store that suggests the variety of styles. I expect they caught bugs like anything, but would have been so much less work than the actual flame lights they were replacing.
posted by clew at 1:23 PM on October 31, 2022 [3 favorites]


Now it's almost become normalized that LEDs need to be replaced.

Essentially all consumer grade led "bulbs" are over driven causing early failure of either the led or driver. There are other ways and the more commercial your light the better it often is. See for example the differences in a mass market edison led and the same product in the better Dubai version.

For room lighting buying higher output fixtures and then running them dimmed can approximate the effect of just not overdriving in the first place.

Around here half domes weren't replacing other flush mount fixtures. They were replacing keyless fixtures or the previously described dual bulb square glass shade fixture (round shade if you were made of money). And they were everywhere in the 90s.
posted by Mitheral at 1:29 PM on October 31, 2022 [3 favorites]


Mitheral , the glowing ceilings, like this? Sleek, but I was thinking of a continuous sheet, something that felt like being under open sky. (Which would sure be a lot of energy, I notice that even with LEDs SAD lights get hot. And I have visited a house with ceiling heat, it wasn’t very comfortable.)


More thriftily, my household got stick-on motion-activated battery-powered under cabinet LED lights to decide where wired-in 12v lights would go and the battery powered ones are absolutely fine, we closed up the boxes we were going to wire into. Great task lighting, and sensitive enough at night to serve as nightlights.
posted by clew at 1:39 PM on October 31, 2022 [1 favorite]


whne i got a quote for installing these it was 58008 dollars
posted by lalochezia at 1:41 PM on October 31, 2022 [15 favorites]


Ha. We have been slowly replacing the boob lights in our house, but even after 10 years of working at it there are multiple ones left hanging there. The only GOOD thing about them is that it's dead easy to swap in the LED bulbs, so even if they remain cheap ugly light fixtures at least they are now pushing 4000k daylight LEDs instead of hot old incandescents.

Worst part for me is that in our 1940s-era home, many of the fixtures are mounted on old small metal junction boxes - and the flat flush mount LED lights I'd like to put in their place often are too bulky on the ceiling-facing side to actually get all the wires and bits jammed into the box so they won't fit. I have returned many lights in despair, hence the remaining boob lights keep on hanging there.
posted by caution live frogs at 1:54 PM on October 31, 2022


I was thinking of something like these cree troffers which in larger sizes would get you better than 95% coverage (assuming your space is a nice full multiple of feet in width/length). But a little searching around gets some products that light right to edge. Designed to be hung from the back you could get 100% coverage limited by the full module size. A crown or tray moulding could probably make them.work in any space. They also claim 0.1% dimming so you might not need sunglasses in the room.
posted by Mitheral at 1:59 PM on October 31, 2022 [1 favorite]


I hate those things, but does anyone not hate them? I have rid my house of all but one. Yep, LED lights provide for so much more interesting choice in flush lighting now.

I write the date on every lightbulb when I install it, something I started when I moved to compact fluorescents as I suspected they didn't last as long as claimed. With CFL lights, the really early ones did last a long time, in fact I never had one of the first generation burn out. But as they became more popular and cheaper, they lasted for less and less time. For LEDs I have found the opposite - early ones would last a year or so before starting to flicker or burning out, but lately I have had to replace them less often.
posted by fimbulvetr at 2:03 PM on October 31, 2022 [1 favorite]


caution live frogs old school small boxes are something an electrician can swap out for you fairly easily in most cases if you find a fixture you just can live without. But it may open a can of worms you dont want to contemplate with an 80 year old installation.
posted by Mitheral at 2:05 PM on October 31, 2022 [2 favorites]


I HATE THESE. My new apartment has some but luckily not all.
posted by tiny frying pan at 2:17 PM on October 31, 2022 [1 favorite]


Turn on your boob light
Let it shine wherever you go
Let it make a happy glow
For all the world to see
posted by kirkaracha at 2:26 PM on October 31, 2022 [2 favorites]


I think we’re setting up tremendous problems for ourselves by exclusively using compact fluorescent and white LED lighting in our homes.

Because morning exposure to certain wavelengths of red light appears to retard and reverse mitochondria driven aging of the human retina:
In humans around 40 years-old, cells in the eye's retina begin to age, and the pace of this ageing is caused, in part, when the cell's mitochondria, whose role is to produce energy (known as ATP) and boost cell function, also start to decline.

Mitochondrial density is greatest in the retina's photoreceptor cells, which have high energy demands. As a result, the retina ages faster than other organs, with a 70% ATP reduction over life, causing a significant decline in photoreceptor function as they lack the energy to perform their normal role.

Researchers built on their previous findings in mice, bumblebees and fruit flies, which all found significant improvements in the function of the retina's photoreceptors when their eyes were exposed to 670 nanometre (long wavelength) deep red light.

"Mitochondria have specific light absorbance characteristics influencing their performance: longer wavelengths spanning 650 to 1000nm are absorbed and improve mitochondrial performance to increase energy production," said Professor Jeffery.
But to get the benefit of red light, exposure has to take place in the morning:
The retina's photoreceptor population is formed of cones, which mediate colour vision, and rods, which adapt vision in low/dim light. This study focused on cones*** and observed colour contrast sensitivity, along the protan axis (measuring red-green contrast) and the tritan axis (blue-yellow).

All the participants were aged between 34 and 70, had no ocular disease, completed a questionnaire regarding eye health prior to testing, and had normal colour vision (cone function). This was assessed using a 'Chroma Test': identifying coloured letters that had very low contrast and appeared increasingly blurred, a process called colour contrast.

Using a provided LED device all 20 participants (13 female and 7 male) were exposed to three minutes of 670nm deep red light in the morning between 8am and 9am. Their colour vision was then tested again three hours post exposure and 10 of the participants were also tested one week post exposure.

On average there was a 'significant' 17% improvement in colour vision, which lasted a week in tested participants; in some older participants there was a 20% improvement, also lasting a week.

A few months on from the first test (ensuring any positive effects of the deep red light had been 'washed out') six (three female, three male) of the 20 participants, carried out the same test in the afternoon, between 12pm to 1pm. When participants then had their colour vision tested again, it showed zero improvement.

Professor Jeffery said: "Using a simple LED device once a week, recharges the energy system that has declined in the retina cells, rather like re-charging a battery.

"And morning exposure is absolutely key to achieving improvements in declining vision: as we have previously seen in flies, mitochondria have shifting work patterns and do not respond in the same way to light in the afternoon -- this study confirms this."

For this study the light energy emitted by the LED torch was just 8mW/cm2, rather than 40mW/cm2, which they had previously used. This has the effect of dimming the light but does not affect the wavelength. While both energy levels are perfectly safe for the human eye, reducing the energy further is an additional benefit.
And among incandescents, compact fluorescents, and warm white LEDs, only incandescents have significant output at 670 nm and longer.

If you scroll down on that page, there's a comparison of the three sources on one graph, and the intensity of natural daylight and incandescent light happen to coincide right around 670 nm.

So if there's one place to keep incandescents, I’d say it’s the kitchen.
posted by jamjam at 2:40 PM on October 31, 2022 [3 favorites]


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posted by bendy at 2:40 PM on October 31, 2022 [1 favorite]


This is exactly the problem. Why is a builder's convenience being considered over the needs of the eventual users of the building

Because people for the most part don't build their own homes. homes are built as profit vehicles not for living in.
posted by Dr. Twist at 2:42 PM on October 31, 2022 [1 favorite]


I’ve been looking through the linked Pinterest DIYs and it’s hard to get everything right - get as much light as possible into the room, don’t glare in peoples eyes, short enough to handle low ceilings and tall people, not a dust and bug trap. And I wasn’t even worrying about my retinal mitochondria yet.

Plus everything that looks stylish now looks extra ludicrous pretty soon.
posted by clew at 2:43 PM on October 31, 2022


Mitheral: "caution live frogs old school small boxes are something an electrician can swap out for you fairly easily in most cases if you find a fixture you just can live without. But it may open a can of worms you dont want to contemplate with an 80 year old installation."

My regular construction guy says "Most houses in this neighborhood should just be torn down and built from scratch" ... but he acknowledges that he makes a lot of money fixing the existing ones. Lord knows he's already corrected a lot of sins (electrical and otherwise!) in our house, but the small junction boxes are not one we have pressing need to address. Not until we've finished paying him for the last remodel, anyway!
posted by caution live frogs at 2:45 PM on October 31, 2022


Because no one's mentioned it yet and I am so rarely pleased with myself, I want to say I'm unreasonably pleased with myself with that post title.

glad you could get that off your chest
posted by Dr. Twist at 2:46 PM on October 31, 2022 [9 favorites]


In light of my own comment, I would have wanted to title it

'The Milk of Human Blindness'.
posted by jamjam at 2:53 PM on October 31, 2022 [3 favorites]


We have many boob lights...

Never thought about it about before. But my in-laws, who have done constructions/renovations for years were in charge of ours.

The downstairs living areas have 5.

The kitchen has three.

All the bathrooms, and upstairs areas have all cool, period, mid-century lightings though. Never knew this was a thing. But they do do their jobs effectively. But now I will never not know that they are boob lights...
posted by Windopaene at 2:57 PM on October 31, 2022


I hate those things, but does anyone not hate them?

I got no beef with them but I don't think I've ever once noticed or care about the look of a light source. There are times, like when painting/sculpting/drawing where light functionality is important but the lightsource could look like a life-size goatse man for all I care. Actually might pay extra for the conversation piece. In general my attitude towards lighting is that it should be helping me to see things, not be seen.

Full disclosure: My room looks like shit, nothing matches, and half my furniture I got from the trash. The furniture all serve their functions. My room is full of artworks and I make art in it all the time, but there is no art to my living space or lighting. Sometimes I turn on this lamp but otherwise I couldn't even tell you what's in the middle of my ceiling.

Wow, I just looked at it's two little bright spots that hurt to look at, so again, I reinforce my disinterest in looking at light sources. If anything, if there were a boob light in my room that wouldn't have hurt to see just now.
posted by GoblinHoney at 2:59 PM on October 31, 2022 [3 favorites]


My friend's home still has all its boob lights, but that was minor compared to the fact that half of the bulbs were 2700K, and the other were daylight 5000K, often in the same exact fixture.
posted by meowzilla at 3:06 PM on October 31, 2022 [7 favorites]


My house came with three "landlord halo" fixtures, one the the bathroom and two in the kitchen. I suppose you could find uglier fixtures, but I don't know where.
posted by Marky at 3:18 PM on October 31, 2022 [3 favorites]


homes are built as profit vehicles not for living in.

I know, but just because that happens doesn't make it right...
posted by Greg_Ace at 3:28 PM on October 31, 2022 [1 favorite]


The boob lights in my rental killed half a dozen supposedly quasi-immortal LED bulbs until I googled it and discovered you need special boob bulbs for those, because regular ones overheat. My landlord didn’t know this either.
posted by showbiz_liz at 3:28 PM on October 31, 2022 [1 favorite]


By calling the arc of light across the night sky 'the Milky Way', we equate light and milk, but I wasn't aware of the more detailed accounts of that name:
It’s worth remembering that the word galaxy originally comes from the Greek phrase galaxias kyklos, meaning ‘milky circle’, presumably because of the white light created by the stars in the night sky. Of course, our own galaxy is known by another milky term: Milky Way. The ancient Greeks believed the galaxy was formed when Hera removed Heracles from her breast, and her divine milk spilled across the heavens.
I looked for stories equating heavenly light with The Virgin Mary's milk, but I didn’t find any.
posted by jamjam at 3:37 PM on October 31, 2022 [3 favorites]


I just want to know
posted by Mister Moofoo at 3:40 PM on October 31, 2022 [2 favorites]


My house came with three "landlord halo" fixtures, one the the bathroom and two in the kitchen. I suppose you could find uglier fixtures, but I don't know where.

Thank you for giving me a term for it. My grandparents had one of those in their kitchen from my earliest memories until their eighties when they sold that house. Even when I was a little kid, I was like "That's a fuckin' ugly-ass light. Why."
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 3:58 PM on October 31, 2022 [1 favorite]


This is exactly the problem. Why is a builder's convenience being considered over the needs of the eventual users of the building

Because people for the most part don't build their own homes. homes are built as profit vehicles not for living in.


Yeah, and the contractor building the entire subdivision can't choose a fixture that's going to please everyone. They build a cheap base model with the expectation that over the next few years, the owner is going to customize and replace things one by one anyway. Might as well not put in something expensive.

(and then landlords don't spend an additional dime they don't have to, so renters get the original boob lights)
posted by ctmf at 4:07 PM on October 31, 2022


Alas, the ceilings in my living space are too low to allow for much beyond flush or semi-flush fixtures and it took me a long time to find anything that I wouldn't hit my head on that wasn't a basic boob light.

Now, though, I'm rescuing a formerly derelict house two doors down and it has lovely high ceilings that could have some fixtures with style but unfortunately I'm having to restrain myself until I get the big budget items like appliances, flooring, etc settled.

However, as long as we're on the subject.. can anybody recommend good resources for the amateur renovator on lighting design? I've been in houses with great lighting and I've usually lived in houses without it and I can tell the difference but I don't know what I should be doing to support better lighting, especially in places like the kitchen. Some of the more obvious things I've learned from dealing with deficiencies in my own living space (i.e. in the kitchen, don't rely on a single central overhead light so that whatever workspace you are working in is thrown into shadow..) but I'm guessing that while lighting design is at least partly art there are also some ground rules that would help a lot..
posted by Nerd of the North at 4:10 PM on October 31, 2022 [3 favorites]


These lights- are they high voltage?
posted by zamboni at 4:22 PM on October 31, 2022 [5 favorites]


With the apparent ubiquity of the default / lowest-common-denominator 'ceiling boob' in one region, I am curious about similar hardware in other regions.

If I were to rent a flat in Manaus, or a house in Manila, is there a similar phenomenon of cheap common ceiling lamp?
Is there an 'everyone who has ever used the toilet in a Brezhnevka has stared up at that same mass-produced light fixture, it even has a nickname'?
posted by bartleby at 4:24 PM on October 31, 2022


The retrofit A19-shaped LED bulbs tend to die for me in boob fixtures and in recessed cans. The electronics are packed around the narrow neck of the bulb so that it can replace a traditional incandescent, but that means they get fried easily. Same with CFLs, but those started out being junk so it was no big loss.

Based on some advice from a Technology Connections video about LED lights, I held my nose and bought one of the integrated retrofit can lights.

They work pretty great - I've had the same lights for several years without a single replacement, no more keeping the ladder nearby. And I'm not generating more e-waste every time I turn on the lights.
posted by meowzilla at 4:24 PM on October 31, 2022 [1 favorite]


sorry nope won't be using this term
posted by glonous keming at 4:29 PM on October 31, 2022


Many of the cheaper Edison-base LED bulbs are not rated for enclosed fixtures. Around here, Puget Sound Energy often has "pre-bates" on energy-saving bulbs and such, where the rebate is a discount automatically applied at the store. For years after the Edison-base LEDs were commonly available, the cheaper PSE-program bulbs were never (or rarely) the type that were designed for enclosed fixtures. And if used in such, they had a super high failure rate.

Lately, though, they've been much better about that, and the last few times I've seen them at the hardware store, they've all been the type rated for enclosed fixtures. I've got three 75w equivalents in the recessed can lights that are my porch lights, which are on a dusk-til-dawn timer, and I've been on the same set of bulbs for going on four years now.

Even with the drawback of having to replace the entire fixture when it fails, I'm still going that way as I'm replacing light fixtures in my home, buying 1 or 2 extras of each type in case I have an early failure. But I figure, these fixtures are so much bigger than a screw-in bulb, they're a lot better equipped (and have much more design space) to effectively dissipate heat, and with a rated life of 50,000 hours, if left on for half the day (rare for us), that's still over ten years of life, and by that time I'm sure either my tastes will have changed, or there will be something newer/brighter/more efficient anyway.
posted by xedrik at 4:38 PM on October 31, 2022 [2 favorites]


If you're on Pinterest, there are a gabillion hits for "DIY flush mount light makeover".

I appreciate that many of these fixes are, in effect, covering up the problem with a sequined bra.
posted by kaibutsu at 5:40 PM on October 31, 2022 [3 favorites]


I've changed to a lot of those in this current dwelling.

Unobtrusiveness is key to setting up a klutz house.
posted by NoThisIsPatrick at 5:42 PM on October 31, 2022


Never heard the term "boob light" before

Me neither and now I am at Home Depot.
posted by y2karl at 7:10 PM on October 31, 2022


zamboni: These lights- are they high voltage ?

I'm only upset right now because I didn't know until now that this existed.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 8:19 PM on October 31, 2022 [1 favorite]


We’ve been calling them ‘ceiling nipples’ for many years now, since so many in our area are more shaped that way!
posted by rambling wanderlust at 3:59 AM on November 1, 2022


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