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These fixtures attract attention to themselves and detract attention from people, often-casting shadows on people’s faces. In planning an efficient lighting system, we must first think of people and how good they will feel in our home when the light is right. However, lighting is one of the elements of design that must agree with human eyes, colors and shapes and the one element that visually enlarges or shrinks spaces. As in a theatre performance we never see the light source, we see highlighted only people and the important details of the plays, the same principle applies to home lighting.

The building I lived as a child was a circular shape, with an atrium open to the sky as the main entrance to the building, closed with a heavy iron door that needed 2 people to close it and a terrace on the top of the building. The terrace was the place for hanging laundry, for drying food or making preserved food and sauces to keep for the winter. Did you know that in the ’60s when in America women already used the washing machine in the comfort of their laundry room, in Italy part of the country was still washing clothes with the ashes from burned wood? We played kids’ game on the terrace, but when the laundry was up drying, we mostly enjoyed watching grown-up lovers and teenagers at their first love experience making out between the sheets hanging in the sun.

Some restaurants totally corrupt ethnic food to cater to the American palate, e.g. making pasta soft and not “al dente” as Italian would eat it, just to give you a small example. It all depends on what kind of nutrition one wants to follow, mine is simple, nothing I eat requires a lot of ingredients, an army of cooks, nor a great expenditure of time. Eating in the car while driving, eating in the street while walking, eating at the computer while working, eating at all hours of the day even in the middle of the night will not do anything good for the digestive tract, only will add stress to it, hence burning, reflux, bloating and more stomach ailments will happen. Eat food for pleasure, indulge in a glass of wine, go ahead, have a chocolate bonbon if you have the desire, one, not the entire box, be moderate all the time and snack on nuts if you must.

I can honestly say to have never liked grey, or couche’ (dormant) colors in homes, thus I would never propose something I don’t like for my clients’ homes unless they absolutely demand it. I love interesting contrasts; with grey walls, I would like all trims in warm brown with a red or golden undertone, as in the photo of the leaves. In Northern countries, the natural light has a bluish tone and unless you purposely want a blue tone in the room, avoid all the greys turning blue and avoid all the blue colors. In Eastern countries, natural light has a warm tone at sunrise and in the Western countries, natural light is very warm at sunset.