Climate Control Through the Seasons

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Lighting has been another issue. There seems to be a common expectation that at night, occupied rooms should be evenly lighted, like a sunny day at noon with a bit of cloud cover. The idea of this sort of indirect lighting has plenty of charm, but it takes many fixtures and a lot of energy bouncing off walls and ceilings to create that kind of homogeneous ambience. And besides that, night is supposed to be dark! Otherwise we wouldn’t get to have sunrise! So we’re voting to depend mostly on light shining right on our book or magazine pages or our knitting or our dinner plate, and lots of nice moody shadowed corners.

I often stand out on our little piece of land with dry plains reaching to the eastern horizon and the Rocky Mountains to the west, block out the housing developments and roadways all around, and imagine what it might have been like here 150 years ago. Cold in winter, hot in summer, dark at night, silent. Silent is long gone from this part of Colorado, and dark at night is a relative term, as in so many urban environments. But the ever-changing weather, it’s still with us. Bring it on.

Linda Ligon is publisher of Natural Home. This is part seven of the ongoing saga of her new natural home. The photo above shows wide overhangs that will prevent excessive solar gain in warmer months.

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