twenty years and through those years i've developed relationships with wonderful people in the tri state area that have helped me with my journey in interior design one of those guests happens to be with us today his name is bruce he is the owner of flemington phantom lighting in ringo's new jersey welcome bruce hello richard nice to see you again and nice to be here it's terrific and today's topic happens to be lighting our shows are going to be topic centric and each time i meet you here in studio we'll be bringing up a different topic our topic today happens to be lighting and the importance of lighting and before we get into your background i do want to bring up something that you had just said to me bruce that i thought was quite interesting is that people are seeming to now embrace the importance of lighting your for your that i do i find that the interest level and the and the exposure that people are you know very early on in my career and if you're familiar with it i think it's still there on davidson avenue in summer somerset philips the big lighting company has a big location there and they do a lighting seminar where you can actually learn about lighting and it's so incredible in part of the seminar they took the group of a good looking group of people and they put different light on them and some of the light me people look brenda's that we're good looking people so it is just as important for me as an interior designer to place beautiful objects in colors in the room as it is for you a lighting expert to be able to go ahead illuminated that in a way that's going to make it for you a lot about what's make it not look terrible also make it look as good as it possibly can so for example here we are in studio one of the things that bruce had said to me when we were just about to go  is a lot of hot lights here and that is is is very truthful about lighting sometimes it's compensation sometimes it's balance if we were to do true lighting in here that would accommodate us it would be too dark to read and i think that's how lighting works it is absolutely let's let's talk about your start where did you get started and what did you study often people say don't take your major seriously how did it wind up that you got involved in lighting i was a  was a teacher i was a mathematics teacher and through the years i had gotten interested in ceiling fans ok remarkably so and at that particular time ceiling fans were relatively new uncharted territory and i found that not only did they save money and made people more comfortable but they made people aware of energy of energy conservation sure and cut your conditioning costs in half shooter rising fans in your heating costs dramatically also that's how i got my start and then we we morphed into lighting about ten years down the road what would you say early on that people started to embrace ceiling fans was it the early eighty's or was it before that well down south they they were utilized for a show ever it was it was  standard people needed i'm sure so the the the lack of air conditioning sure and people thought once air conditioning was was being utilized you no longer needed ceiling fans however ceiling fans are causing the ruin and people started to use the fans to supplement their recognition sure and in the eighty's there was a tremendous energy crisis and right utilized fans more and more and more and once they were made aware of it it became almost  so my my first recollection of starting to have fans be popular generically was the early eighty's irradiate in the right in the original fans weren't too good were they they were a little bit allowed the lighting on them was terrible fans have evolved into things that are absolutely beautiful mathematics yes dramatic changes in decor of ceiling fans you know they're now they're now focal points in rooms right and  they come in in various finishes and various sizes and various blade finishes and your people have made him a focal point of their room sure especially in a more contemporary set it rather settings that were contemporary they could be quite striking right let's see how this evolved though in your life bruce so you're sure to get interested in fans you thought it was something that was going to do well and in fact are very very wise because it did evolve and so on where did that go from you to say ok i think fans something that is really going to be popular it's a good thing for me to go into if you open your first store and where did you open your first store my first store was in flemington new jersey i got off and we started selling things commercially ok commercially so you're selling them to build known not to builders but to stores factories wow distribution centers one of my first clients was johnson and johnson as a matter of well so you were doing big volume big volume at that particular time and us fans not lighting stratify the air excreta were and they make the temperature from ceiling to floor exactly the same or within a degree of each other right where before it was forty fifty degrees warmer at the ceiling and that with filtered through the want to bring up a point though initially and for a long time actually druce a fan was did what it was supposed to do it had a blade that went around it circulated the air and you went one way if you wanted to the the the cool air to come down towards you went the opposite direction if you wanted the warm air to go up and so on that's why some of the had winter and summer settings but we'll talk about that further but the early lights were sort of like bells if you will that were on the bottom of the fan so i had my issue with them before we had light kits that were in cased is that was terrible lighting wasn't that it was not good good lighting but it was lighting right so you had the you know you had the offshoot of lighting and the fan right and they had conquered and light  and that's mean at that particular point they were they were just lights in the middle of the room and they were either circular or round and they weren't much of a decorative assessor a they were just there provided light utility right yeah and it was you know not not the perfect amount of light nor the right light but it was still you know it was light you can walk into a room in a trip but with the early like kids they were sort of these offshoots that sort of came off the bottom of the line and my issue was is that the fear and the movement of the fan interrupted the light if you will or created shadows so when you looked at that light it was very a truce of in your eyes depends upon the light kid i understand  and there were certainly kids especially the ones where the light bulb was ensconced in in the actual light they were they were like spotlights exactly and you would get you would get almost pop lights throughout the room  not not even light now there was not a good you're sure and then the movement of the fan affected how you looked at the light i correct correct when did we start getting light kits that were sort of enclosed and more sort of a better use of the light on the i mean i wouldn't i wouldn't live or stay in a place that didn't have to leave the bedroom i think the comfort level exactly where people are putting them in every room and the important thing is as we've discussed in the past is the performance factor the fans i mean all fans are not created equal sure so when someone buys if a fan is not a fan is not a fan ok there's different there's different attributes that that fans have a lot of fans you don't want because you're not going to provide the the the amount of air that you expect they're going to make noise and they going to wobble even today i mean there's a lot of lot of factors to consider when you buy a ceiling fan so your fan centric now if i could say and then all of a sudden you branch to the lighting we what was the impetus a lighting and fan distribution center as opposed to just just one product fans then i think you did something as you have all because you've been in the farmington area for thirty years or so and then you had two different stores that didn't just say that you east brunswick we had stores and they were all called fanfare they were fanfare yes they were fanfare i purchased a lighting company back in the law and middle to late ninety's in flemington called so then how did that evolve into the lighting portion of your business which i think is so critical yes we grew more we grew more aware of the need for lighting and good lighting and good lighting fans as you know are there they're not it's not it's not people think of it as a seasonal thing sure past and today people use the me around for high and for air conditioning  but we wanted to get the the the cyclic capacity of just ceiling fans out of the way that's one of the reasons we went into lighting sure and i think that lighting itself  just gotten so beautiful you know i say since two thousand or so in the last seventeen years a lot of things haven't gotten better but lighting is clearly one of them that has gotten better much more interesting shapes and styles and i think people as you said and we said earlier in the broadcast are becoming much more aware of lighting letting us fashion but also the functionality of lighting and putting life lighting in task areas such as in kitchens and workspace is the correct one but i want to with your story because i find it very interesting how you sort of transition to lighting and how you sort of do both together so tell us where you're from we can fan lighting is located now we are located on route to about two thirty one in ringo's new jersey right adjacent to flemington right diagonally across six thousand square feet of wow lighting and sands and mirrors and assess arrays as you know from the easing now let's talk about something that i think that you do so well i think you're very stuporous and one of the things that you did so well as times changed  and retail changed and the inception of the internet and people embracing the internet for shopping did you initially see that people were just in general not physically shopping as much going online well  i recognize that that there was going to be a significant impact sure on brick and mortar establishment with with the internet and what i thought from the start was that service is every bit as important as price so sure so what we did is we mailed it price with service so we meet internet prices and we provide the most important commodity service exactly which they're all those things the integrity of the of the product they're buying exact you're buying a picture and if you're not if you're not aware of of really what's behind the photograph you have no idea of how to spend your money it's about value it's not how much you spend it's what you get for what you spend well you know i could see somebody go into the internet maybe want to buy a shirt you know what your ralph lauren get your it looks like and someone you know what your size as you go on you click you pick you click green you put your color size and it comes but lighting really needs instructions lighting is too complicated and too critical i think just the click click click right now i do know you have a wonderful website now what is the web site the web site is flemington lighting dot com ok and basically rich as you know all web sites are primarily the same they use the same pictures from the same manufacturer sure and it's just an assortment it's like looking for jones in the yellow pages in the united states right and there's a few of them around so people are spending hours trying to navigate the the many many many many choices that they have and once somebody realizes that they can get help and guidance and they could find out exactly what they're looking for with some professional help it becomes an easier process  of lighting so but for our viewers here you can go to your website you can do all the shopping on the internet if you like the dish and you have a wonderful space six thousand square feet where they can comment and they're really going to get educated on fans it's not going to cost them anything to come in and in fact what you are doing is you're giving your matching the internet price so that regardless of coming in or not you're getting the internet price and you're getting less for sure so what's better than that you know the biggest complaints that most people tell me is they'll go into the major name department stores and service is gone there isn't on you want to try something on you want something of a different color you want to something ship somewhere you have to go look for someone to come into an environment in two thousand and seventeen and have somebody that's go is very kind of way be there to help you and have the education that's really something isn't it yet we we absolutely strive to provide that that professionalism and that service we're not we're not salespeople we're there to help people find what they're looking for sure and save the money you know and i been to because one of my locations is within your look at what it is that i've heard you say oh no you need to go here you need to go to an electrical supply store so you're very fair with people who actually will not use or is this just to get people true information so they make a wise decision which i think is very important and very important if you're just like yourself so i mean you're you help people navigate the you know the quagmire of style sure and design design which is always ever changing and that was actually a good segue for me because i want to talk about what our viewers are are hungry for here and that is what's going on what's trending see lading is change a law i think a lot in the past couple of years other things that i see trending i think when you go to buy there are things that you see seasons ahead trending and so on so i want to talk about some of the things as a designer that i feel are trending and what you're starting to say now one of the things that i see trend is now lighting fixtures without any glass and people are asking me if they're going to do a a lantern or a pendant that they're looking for things without glass are you finding people asking for you or are you buying things that don't have the glass and that anymore and why is that well glassless fixtures are or very very popular now the geometric shapes had a lot of dimension oh it's all jewelry it's all geometric something that that is not that large with wise but it has depth and density really makes a statement over a table or in the center of a room sure we find that the glassless fixtures are much art form but the the prevalence of glasses fixtures and reinvests today yeah very thin and a lot of companies most companies have them right so when you win when you're looking for lighting i mean there's many many many options and of course size and depth and the actual amount of light that that you derive give off here is extraordinarily important and that's what we hope people a couple of the things that i see besides the fact that the open lanterns aren't having the glass as much anymore is that i see a trend towards more of an industrial look more of a contemporary more of an industrial look and one of the things i see continue to see the shape of sort of like a cage things that look like a cage and are you finding that when you go to buy i do i do a lot of a lot of cageless fixtures again the the size would depend upon the environment sure a number of lights would depend upon need the the mental lighting that that's needed in the room and as you know lighting today should be layered it shouldn't be from one source now it's foolish to be for months or even in the dining room which i have to educate people to do because there's not good just a few shade of the light which  very important so so the cage is another one the open lantern fixture is a remarkable one to me what i do all the time in dining rooms as i often take the way people sort of williamsburg brass chandelier with the eight candles and the shades on and take that off and do more of a transitional still traditional more of a transitional drum fixture that is sort of a linen shade something that has that look maybe there are some arms underneath but they're surrounded by a beautiful shade do you feel that that that's something that's still continuing to exist and evolve what people love drum shapes and i think great they're they're very very wonderful utilized and in different in different areas so with the inception of the drum fixture i think sometimes that allows people that have maybe more more of a traditional a static to say with let's update a little bit baby let's go to something that i can see myself with a drum fixture because it's transitional it's not so contemporary and i think it's their minds thinking about sort of changing their lighting or updating their lighting later you can make a place that's very dated that you think if it's not the rabbi really absolutely and then it's not a super big investment but it really pays off of what you do with like staging for realtors and the first thing that we do change is the lighting and then of course the paint but the lighting is first because it really you really can make a statement with lighting both exterior and interior the right proportion the right colors the right combinations and  updated space just with the lighting exactly definitely color as you as you mentioned is very important so house or room will show a lot better and living in the environment will be a lot more pleasing to the to the resident with proper lighting you know you talked about the geometric shapes and i consistently in my business now whether it be fabrics or the look of geometry or geometric are very popular right now and i really like them they're very sharp looking these geometric shapes and so on also i see trending a lot is over islands lots of pendant lights but tendencies in a lot of places i've seen pendant for by just adding and subtracting pandan spend that's what housley now what i see happening a lot is i see things going towards clear glass so we're shades were always frosted before i see a lot of clear glass not even see the glass anymore  glass is still in style but clear glass because they're exposing the bowl the bulb is becoming stylish the bulb is very stylish why is that is it just because of that new edison bulb i'd like you to tell our viewers also about the look of the edison bulb generically said edison the new l e d s are both cool functional and decorative and people use them they come in different sizes different lengths different with singing and you can get an artistic look you can get  a dusting a look just depends upon the look that you want to achieve in your environment with bulbs i really love you know i had a grammy for us i first sort of saw the look for and i started to see it was its own luck and it was simple but it was interesting if you have an edison ball the the actual color of the glass around the bulb and you can get the color that you choose you can get them white clear white bright white where you can get them with an amber tone wow and some member tones are much every one that ever would be known to man so that i came sort of a thing and then it evolved although i still think you can get in qantas and bolts what was the what was the low but they were just not of were they not environmentally efficient what was the story about getting rid of incandescent while there were two transitions and breach on both one of them was they were going to eliminate incandescent bulbs by a certain date and it was a mandate by the government right now with ceiling fans they said that any ceiling fan light kit that is sold has to be sold with bulbs and the bulbs that they included where the c f l's are the squiggly type those are those are all which were kitchen which requires task light and the couple's various student came and spent a lot of time he spent a lot of time he didn't charge them for your time and you don't to come into the into your wonderful store and really educating them on the right type of light to do so want to tell this one one last time about your consultations and we're always there to help people find the the correct lighting and help them find what they're looking for what they're searching for bruce thank you for being my guest today we've learnt so much about lighting and i look forward to having you again i've been very pleased  with working with prince the community television to bring these wonderful resources to you and we will do definitely in the new year we're going to do something again about lighting we're going to bring some different factors into studio put them up on monitor and tell you what you can do to make your home look absolutely the best that you can do it again for design for the times i'm richard scary have a great day