Philips Lighting

Some time ago, Kay and I caught a sale for Philips lighting going on in a local Swiss store and we picked up two of these two-light spots from the Philips Instyle line.

Kay, my favourite personal electrician, put them up immediately when we got home, but he was disappointed that they were not nearly as bright as he had hoped. He’s kind of obsessed with spotlights.

We tend to bicker about what kind of lighting to get and have a hard time agreeing on light fixtures. He usually wants spots for lots of bright light whereas I would like an aesthetically pleasing light that provides comforting, warm light.

The Ledino spots do provide a nice warm light, but I have to agree with Kay that they are not especially bright. Still, it is a big step up from having to rely solely on the fluorescent lighting that came with the bathroom mirrors and I am much happier to use only the Philips lights unless I really need to see something clearly. (Who wants to see their wrinkles and pimples in bright light at 6 in the morning anyway??)

We were happy to get a slight deal on these lights, but we still haven’t decided on anything for the bedrooms, where we are still using the make-shift shade lamps that Kay put up so long ago.

In the kitchen, we were pretty set with the idea of getting this four-spot Ledino light for 379CHF:

And in the dining room, we found a lovely three-bulb spot in store that actually came in an impressive 5 spot version online.

The only problem with the 5-spot light is that it cost like 1000CHF, so even though we knew we wanted this light since about May 2013, we waited to buy it.

How long did it take you to decide the lighting in your house? Did you do it step-by-step?

All pictures from Philips.

Swiss Features: Rolling blinds

There are a few features in our new house that I feel are fairly Swiss or European compared to US homes, so I wanted highlight them as I have time to take some photos.

First up are our automatic rolling blinds.

I had these at the first house I moved into in Switzerland but I have not had them in every house or flat I’ve lived in. I consider them kind of luxurious. They are basically big blinds on the outside of your house so you don’t have to deal with all the muck and dust on blinds within your home… and they are a lot more sturdy and hard-wearing than traditional American blinds.

Some Swiss houses have manual rolling shutters that you have to crank by hand, but these ones have buttons for up, down and stop in the middle of the switch. They are sooo convenient and I kind of love them.

I honestly wish we had had the option to have them in the bedroom because it would be SO much darker with them. They are really great for blocking out light.

My only complaint with ours are that there are two sets of shutters in the living room and the switches are not together so if you want to open or close both of them, you need to walk the length of the hallway and switch each shutter individually, which can be slightly annoying if you are heading out of the flat and want to shut off everything from the door.

We also have two for each set of windows in the kitchen. If we had gotten a flat on the side of the complex we actually would have these shutters everywhere, but we strangely landed on the side of the building with green plantation shutters on the bedroom side of the units. More on how those work later!

How do you shut out light in your house? Do you have different treatments for different rooms?

Spinning

Today I woke up early enough to catch the 6:30 train and get to the gym on time for the start of spinning class at 6:45am. I told Kay I was feeling pretty nervous because it was my first class and it would be all in Swiss German.

It definitely was kind of terrifying at times, because anything new in a foreign language always freaks me out a bit, no matter how long I’ve been here. And indeed half the time I was either too tired to really understand what the teacher was saying or I didn’t really get what his Swiss German meant exactly… but he was very nice and showed me how to set up my bike and gave me some tips during class to try and make sure I wasn’t making any incorrect movements.

I almost thought I wouldn’t make it at times and wondered in some moments if each “Nochmal uefe!” (Up again!) was some variation of never-ending hell, but I persevered. I sweated like I haven’t sweat in months and I made my muscles nice and sore.

Kay was proud I made it through the whole spinning class when I texted him later and that I even have the willpower to get myself to the gym that early in the morning. And I have to say, there is something really satisfying about going to work at 8:45am and knowing that I am the only one in the office who has worked out for an hour already that day. Huzzah!