Tips For Shopping An Appropriate Chandelier

Chandeliers are customarily installed only in foyers or dining areas of grandiosely elegant homes, supposedly a housing interior embellishment exclusive to the rich. Elaborate chandeliers that comprise of cut crystal or glass have been considered as status symbols, a signature of affluence. These shimmering fixtures are classically massive, intricate and ornate, often making them suitable as centerpieces for a room. However, modern interior designers have been employing chandeliers of a wide spectrum of sizes and shapes for adorning almost any type of home, irrespective of dimensions and splendor. The aesthetic quality of chandeliers can render an inviting atmosphere and an arty accent to any home space. Chandeliers have been popularly hung over living areas, sleeping quarters, breakfast nooks, and kitchens in addition to traditionally familiar places.

These days, chandeliers do not necessarily have to be sophisticated or classy. Besides the conventional formal-type crystal chandeliers, one can now find stained-glass teacup, colonial, revival, and various other contemporary varieties of chandeliers for embellishing home interiors. While some of these contemporary designs remain to be expansive, spanning at least eight feet in diameter, others can be found no wider than two to three feet in diameter.

Chandeliers can cost a lot of money irrespective of their particular style. Thus, it is quite important to find one that appropriately accentuates your home. Top chandelier designers recommend home owners to choose a chandelier that harmonizes with the time period and overall architectural motif of the house rather than getting trendy and selecting the current fad in style. For an average home owner, buying a new chandelier every time decorative tastes evolve is really not a luxury.

When shopping for chandeliers, the first aspect to consider is the size of the room where it is meant to be hung. Fortunately, there is a general rule of thumb that will guide the appropriate choice. The chandelier should follow a simple proportion rule: approximately two inches in diameter for every foot of the room?s total width. For example, if the living area is fifteen feet wide all in all, the appropriate diameter of the chandelier should be about 30 inches. But take note that the complexity of the chandelier can also project the illusion of being large?an extremely elaborate one will appear larger in the room than it actually is. Hence, one can also make the necessary adjustments to the estimated diameter to take this factor into consideration.

The second aspect to take into account is the height as well as the structure of the furniture in the room. Suppose that a certain tall hutch is fixed in the living room. It is not advised to hang the chandelier directly above this piece of furniture because it will render a cluttered look to the room. In relation to this concern, there must be enough gap for head space so that running or bumping into the chandelier when crossing the room will not occur.

Another aspect to consider is if the chandelier is meant to be hung above a second centerpiece in the room, such as a dining room table. The dimensions of the chandelier should be in proportion to that centerpiece. Another rule of thumb to abide by is to select a chandelier size which measures approximately a third of the diameter of the centerpiece.

The last aspect to be accounted for is lighting. If the chandelier is planned to be the primary source of light in an area, its brightness should be sufficient to shed light uniformly to the whole area. Furthermore, the chandelier?s brightness should not overwhelm a second light source. One way to get over this quandary is to install a dimmer switch that allows adjustment to the amount of light the chandelier gives off. One can also utilize table lamps, floor lamps, and corner lamps to aid in illuminating the room.

Dranreb Earl Juanico
http://www.goldenageusa.com

How To Choose A Chandelier Based On Style

Chandelier Style Guide

If you are building your dream home or renovating an existing one and want to add a chandelier, this guide will offer information on the different styles to help you make the right decision for your home. In today?s marketplace, you have a myriad of options when it comes to chandeliers. In fact, with so many options available it is very easy for the consumer to get confused or frustrated in the process.

Assuming you are not sure which style of chandelier you want, here are some of the many styles on the market today.

Mission Chandeliers

Mission chandeliers have a clean straight edge and simplistic appeal. Mission style chandeliers are made with stained glass, mica or other light diffusing material to produce a warm glow.

Wrought Iron Chandeliers

Not all wrought iron chandeliers are created equal. Some are powder coated to appear like they are the? real thing?. These are much less expensive than their genuine wrought iron counterparts.

Tiffany Chandeliers

Tiffany chandeliers come in multiple shapes, sizes and prices. They can be made with stained glass in a variety of colors.

Rustic Chandeliers

Rustic chandeliers are made with a more traditional lodge appeal. They incorporate metal and various colors of mica for the shade. Rustic chandeliers can also be made in copper, bronze and steel.

Antler Chandeliers

For those who prefer antler chandeliers, there are two choices: faux or authentic. Authentic antler chandeliers require the task of locating shed antlers and incorporating their varying shapes into the design. This results in a much more expensive price than the faux chandeliers, which can easily be manufactured and replicated with the same design.

Custom Chandeliers

Many chandelier manufacturers are able to create pieces to suit each individual. Chain lengths can be adjusted to hang from every type of ceiling. Chandeliers can even be constructed from your unique design. Always ask your dealer about this if you need something that isn?t on the shelf. A good example would be if you need more or less light in an area. You can request that the manufacturer build the chandelier to accommodate the wattage that you need. Another example is that chandeliers can be built from your unique design with images or text laser cut in. Custom chandeliers will be more expensive depending upon the amount of work required.

Chandeliers that are thoughtfully chosen can make a drastic difference in your home. With options from pre-made to custom, you are certain to find a chandelier to compliment your home d?cor.

Visit http://www.BlueRidgeLighting.com for a complete selection of home lighting, chandeliers, pendant lights and table lamps

Factors To Consider In Selecting The Right Crystal Chandelier

Most people want to make sure that they have beautiful and attractive homes. They usually find a decor or work of arts that can make their homes elegant enough to make appealing homes.

Putting crystal chandelier is typically a good way of making a home attractive enough not only for the owners of the house themselves but also to their visitors. There are lots of people who hang crystal chandelier in their homes to make it sophisticated and beautiful.

Indeed, crystal chandelier can make a home appealing, with its beauty and elegance, certainly each crystal chandeliers are work of arts. There are plenty of crystal chandeliers with different colors, shapes, designs, and sizes. Each of these can definitely make a home an alluring one.

Each crystal chandelier can make a beautiful home but there are still some factors that needed to be follow to help you out in your search for the best crystal chandelier for your home.

Before purchasing a crystal chandelier, you have to decide first the room that you want to put your crystal chandelier since each room requires different style, design and size of crystal chandeliers.

In selecting for crystal chandelier, you have to consider the specific room you want to put a crystal chandelier. You have to match it with the design, style and size of the specific room. In order to make sure that it will add up a lot more beauty and elegance to your home, you have to match it up with your room’s design, style and size. Either way, you can change the design and style of your specific room and follow it with the design and style of the crystal chandelier you purchased.

Size of the crystal chandelier is very important; it can make you avoid dullness and crowdedness of your specific room such as dining room, living room and foyer.

There are measures that you can follow in selecting crystal chandelier for the rooms of your home such as the foyer, dining room and living room.

If you prefer to put a crystal chandelier in your foyer, 2.5 to 3.5 feet wide crystal chandelier is what you should purchase. If you want to place a crystal chandelier in your dining room, and you have a six person dining table, 1.5 to 2 feet crystal chandelier is what you should purchase. If you have an eight person table, 2 to 1.5 feet crystal chandelier is what you should hang. If you have 10 to 12 person dining table, 2.5 to 3.5 feet crystal chandelier is what you should buy. If you want to put a crystal chandelier in your living room, 20 to 30% of your living room’s width is what you should buy in a crystal chandelier.

Wanting a crystal chandelier is not simply buying one and hangs it to your home; you have to consider certain factors to make sure that the crystal chandelier you purchase is the right one for your home or for the specific room of your home to make sure it will add beauty and elegance.

Following these certain factors can help you find the right crystal chandelier that can give beauty, appeal, elegance and spark to one’s home.

Eliza Maledevic writes for http://Jump2Top.com - SEO Company

Eliza Maledevic Ayson
http://www.goldenageusa.com

The End of Call Center Entrepreneurship:

The End of Call Center Entrepreneurship: And the Flowering of Offshore Outsourcing

CFA President, World Outsourcing Providers Association

There have been few entrepreneurial ventures in business history as rewarding as the offshore call center. Within Asia, there are numerous tales of entrepreneurs who made tons of money for themselves by creating substantial value for their customers and employees.

A recent one is Ambergris Solutions Inc. in Manila. The company was started a few years ago by three young entrepreneurs with little money of their own and even less call center experience. They had a lot to learn about running a call center, and it took 18 money-losing months before they stumbled upon their first paying customer. But over the two and a half years that followed, their business grew explosively to almost 3,000 employees serving a roster of blue-chip clients. A couple of months ago, controlling interest of the thriving enterprise was sold to a large Canadian IT organization called Telus International in a deal valued at $43.5 million. Many would agree this was an adequate paycheck for just a few years of work.

This story gives the impression that starting a call center in Asia is an easy path to fast riches. However, just a week or so after the announcement of the Ambergris deal, Gartner Inc. released an astonishing report that said, "As many as 70% of the top 15 Indian business process outsourcing start-ups will cease to exist in the coming months." Gartner added scathingly that "despite the hype, only a small fraction of customer service outsourcing will be done at offshore locations."

Dropping Like Flies

The two situations might seem contradictory, but they aren't. Margins in the call center sector have declined steadily over the past couple of years as customers demand lower bill rates and agents insist on higher salaries. The result has been a squeezing out of the smaller (and often newer) operators, which are unable to spread their fixed costs over a larger base of revenue producing agents. Throughout India and the Philippines, there has already been significant rationalization (i.e. closings, buyouts, mergers, etc.) in the call center industry, and Gartner is probably right to say that more are to come.

The Telus purchase of Ambergris, like IBM's purchase of Daksh eServices Pvt. Ltd. in India and numerous others, shows that the call center sector is now exclusively a game for big-boys -- it has become a "mature industry," as they say in MBA school. The days when someone could start a little call center of his own and learn the business along the way are finished.

So what's a greedy young entrepreneur to do now?

The pioneering efforts of the call center sector have proved that the concept of offshore outsourcing can succeed exceedingly well. (Actually, manufacturing proved this years ago, but let's not go into that.) In most large companies, however, answering telephone inquiries is a microscopic part of their overall business. The big opportunities in business process outsourcing are still to be realized.

This fact is shown in the diversity of the services offered by the current batch of outsourcing entrepreneurs. Here are a few examples of companies operating just in the Manila area: XMG Global IT Research and Advisory Inc. prepares high-end IT research, YellowAsp Corp. creates layout designs for printed circuit boards, Forssman Asia Pacific prepares construction design drawings, Key-In Data Solutions does claims processing, Primesoft develops advanced Web applications, VinciWorks designs online training programs, and Pulse DesignTech offers electronics design services. The list goes on and on.

The large IT services firms and the call center companies are jumping on the business process outsourcing bandwagon too. CapGemini has large facilities in three locations in China providing accounting and human resources outsourcing services. IBM's non-IT outsourcing operations are quickly becoming larger than those of IT in the Philippines.

A quick look at the Web site of IT consulting giant Accenture Ltd. reveals an astounding diversity of services. Under "Outsourcing" in the "Services Offered" section, there are Accenture Finance Solutions, Accenture HR Services, Accenture Learning, Accenture Procurement Solutions, Accenture Business Services for Utilities, Accenture eDemocracy Services, Navitaire Inc. and Accenture Insurance Services. By comparison, only two IT-related services are listed in the entire section.

Two of the world's five largest call center companies don't even call themselves call center companies anymore. ClientLogic Corp. is now an "international business process outsourcing provider." StarTek Inc. says it's a "global provider of business process outsourcing services."

It's clear that the difference between outsourcing today and outsourcing yesterday is significant. Whereas before, just a few business segments were growing rapidly (say, call centers and IT), now there are multitudes in the same situation, with countless more sure to follow. Some business leaders I have spoken to have used the phrase "tipping point" to describe the current life-cycle stage of services outsourcing. One fellow I spoke to thought the phrase "business process outsourcing" wasn't descriptive enough to express the vast diversity of the current environment. He felt a better phrase was something along the lines of "everything-anyone-can-possibly-imagine-as-being-outsourced outsourcing."

So, we shouldn't be overly concerned about missing the gold rush in offshore call center outsourcing. The business process outsourcing mother lode is just around the corner, and the opportunities are wide open. Greedy entrepreneurs everywhere should rejoice.

Richard Mills CFA is President of the World Outsourcing Providers Association (WOPA). The organization serves providers and customers of offshore outsourcing services. WOPA aims to improve the probability success of offshore outsourcing ventures by sharing best practices across organizations and countries.

e: info@outsourcingproviders.org w: www.outsourcingproviders.org

Richard is considered the leading expert on Asia-Pacific outsourcing by ComputerWorld magazine. His regular column called "View from Offshore" is a feature of the publication. Richard has also been called "guru on outsourcing"

Residential Art Glass Lighting - Design Trends in Chandeliers, Sconces, & Pendants

Much in the way jazz altered our concept of music, glass art has changed our expectations of residential lighting. In fact, glass art lighting is being hailed as one of the hottest new trends to hit luxury home design. According to 25-year Southern California interior designer Greg Griffith, G. Griffith & Co. of Destin, FL, “It’s emerging as a transitional point for a more energetic look. From Asian to 18th Century, every style and design can incorporate glass art lighting. The fact that these are actual sculptured pieces means you’re adding art to the room without cluttering the wall.”

Aside from aesthetics, the benefit to glass art lighting is that it’s so flexible, it ends up resolving many design conflicts. Take, for example, the story of the Wisdom Window. This stained glass piece was created by a California glass artist to create a welcoming light at the end of a dark, New York apartment hallway. The artist created four matching sconces, but wanted the end of the hallway to feel like a window. He innovated a design where a diffuser sheet will be installed underneath the stained glass piece, and lit from behind.

One New York glass artist developed a unique way to illuminate her bathroom. She created her own mosaic glass sink and lit it from underneath to create a warm, amber glow. It also doubles as her nightlight. To underscore the look of an underlit sink, matching sconces are ideal. Some kitchen designers are commissioning glass art sconces and pendants to match underlit glass kitchen countertops. This creates interesting, ambient lighting in a more finished-looking lighting package.

Glass art lighting can be a subtle accent, or a prism through which the light bathes a room in a swatch of exotic colors. “I find many decorators driving décor based on the lighting fixtures,” says Seattle-based glass artist, Suzanne Guttman. “It’s easy to fall in love with a tentacled pendant light or chandelier and make it the centerpiece of a room.”

The Cost of Beautiful

Investing in gorgeous glass art lighting is less daunting than one may assume. A Bellagio budget isn’t necessary to incorporate museum-quality glass lighting into a residential design. Sconces range from $400 to $1,200; small pendant lighting (suspended by one point in the ceiling) ranges from $300 to $600; larger pendants and chandeliers can range from $1,500 to $10,000. Serious collectors consider glass art an investment as well as being an aesthetic piece, just as they would an original painting, or a piece of antique furniture.

Glass Art Lighting 101

Once a homeowner decides on glass art lighting, it’s helpful to know a little about the glass and where it should be used, based on its physical characteristics. Here are some tips:

Blown glass has some limitations to the size and diameter that an artist can create. Some blown glass lighting utilizes many pieces in its design to create a larger, more sculptural effect.

Cast glass is very beautiful, but quite unusual in lighting because it is very heavy to suspend. One glass artist has created a woven glass technique that takes on the look of woven fabric, and results in a glass art lighting fixture that feels like a glass blanket.

Fused & slumped glass is popular for glass art lighting. Through the use of molds, fusing allows the artist to create large diameter canopied type lighting, thus enabling a single shade to be up to 48” in diameter. This creates consistency in shape and wonderful, unusual textures.

Etched glass is another wonderful medium for flat panel lighting. Pieces such as The Three Graces, by glass artist Margaret Oldman, can be lit with plain or multi-colored fiber optics, depending on the look a designer is trying to achieve.

Mosaic and stained glass are similar, in that they’re both ideal for flat panel lighting. Artists will often incorporate Italian smalti glass, blown sheets of transparent glass broken into small pieces, or dichroic glass, which is coated on one side with a metallic-like mirror finish.

Buyer Beware

One thing homeowners should remember, especially with lighting, is to be sure that the glass artist they’ve chosen understands how the electrical specs will dovetail with the piece, and that they know U.L. standards. As founder of Glass Artists Gallery, I estimate that close to 30% of our first-time customers come to us because they had negative experiences commissioning residential glass art lighting on their own. We are very careful about screening the artists we represent to make sure they understand the technical specifications

In short, glass art lighting choices become a very personal way to reveal a homeowner’s fingerprint on the interior design. As George Bernard Shaw once said, “You use a glass mirror to see your face; you use works of art to see your soul.”

For more information or to see thousands of images of art glass lighting, visit Art Lighting Gallery

Jack Healy is part owner of Functional Art Gallery, LLC - Functional Art Gallery - a growing family of online resources for the designer, architect, builder and discerning homeowner. The company focuses on handcrafted functional & architectural works of art for both residential and commercial projects. The Functional Art Gallery family includes Glass Artists Gallery, Sinks Gallery and Art Lighting Gallery. Together these resources provide the largest collection of artisan and designer products available in North America.

Enhance Your Decor With Distinctive Chandeliers

For many years, chandeliers were used primarily in foyers and dining rooms, but today, homeowners are installing them all over the house, from the master bedrooms and master baths to great rooms and powder rooms.

Most of the time, chandeliers are sold without the shades and are often used that way. Adding or changing shades gives you a totally different appearance and reinvents the piece.

To determine the size of a chandelier that will hang in a foyer, or any room, just add the room dimensions together. If your foyer is 12' by 16', add 12 + 16=28. The proper size chandelier for this space would be 28" in diameter.

Chandelier bulbs come in up to 60 watts so if you have a 10-arm chandelier, that's 600 watts. Try using 40- or even 25-watt bulbs for the right amount of light in your space. Go one step further and install a dimmer to control the glow even more.

Choose a chandelier with a diameter equal to the width of the table. For example, if the table is 54", select a chandelier with a 27" diameter. The chandelier should hang approximately 30-32" above the tabletop. This is low enough to complement your table settings, but high enough to be out of the way.

Glass chandeliers require careful approaches and procedures for care that are different from those for metal or metal and glass lighting devices. In a dining room that's totally open with nothing but columns delineating the space, you may be able to go with something larger

Cleaning your chandelier once a year will keep it shining to its original brilliance. Use a damp or dry cloth to clean your chandelier.Roger King has been writing articles on home decorating ideas for several years, and has been helping people find and review the best value for interior design solutions.

Visit his web site www.all-homeinteriordesigns.com for free tips and guides for your home improvement projects