more on lighting
after a bunch of searching, i've settled upon the following lights for the ceiling:
i think they look really dope, plus they're really slim--only 3.5" deep.
i'm also going to install 4 wall uplights throughout the room to help illuminate the ceiling and provide more general illuminance. choosing these is a bit trickier, seeing as how most wall lights are designed to be hard-wired, but i never had the walls wired for lighting, only the ceiling. i've read that at least some types of lighting can be converted from hard-wired to plug with the use of these kits you can buy at home depot and lowes. i'm gonna go check those out tomorrow and see if they'll work.
related to this, over the weekend i found a cool lighting estimator page from GE. actually, i found that page several months ago, but at the time wasn't sure how to use it since i wasn't versed in things like footcandles. but thanks to an email message from tommy last week with a bunch of useful lighting info, i got on the right track and rediscovered that page. the original, less-technical web page i found on this topic suggested an amount of lighting that was about half what GE's estimator says. which very conveniently matches up with my subjective observation that the room is only about half as bright as it should be.
i should clarify in all this talk about lighting that the amount of lighting for any given session will be completely flexible; the ceiling lights will be on a dimmer, and the wall lights will be individually switchable. i also have a floor torchiere i'll be putting over by the console.