Hello Sunshine!

Regular readers will know that I have been arranging and rearranging, organizing and reorganizing my art room.  I have been unhappy with the space because of the lack of natural light.  With only one North facing window at the end of the 17' room there was little natural light.  There is even a tree in front of the window to shade it more.  No matter how I arranged the room and my supplies, I never would spend much time there because it is just not a cheerful place to be. A few blog entries ago, I asked what others are doing about lighting their work spaces.  Andrea (no blog) and several others suggested Solatube.  We perused the website and called that day.  Yesterday they installed not one, but two solatubes in the ceiling of my art room!

Here is the before photo taken with no flash and no enhancement.

Here is the "during" photo.  There was absolutely no mess.  They just cut a hole in the ceiling and a hole in the roof and install the fixture.

We had two unattractive ceiling fixtures and had the solatubes installed in the same location.

Here is the after photo taken early this morning.  The two solatubes capture the daylight, one predominantly capturing morning light and one afternoon light, but they both capture light all day long.

It is an amazing difference.  We had received estimates on skylights, but since our ceiling is so slanted, the contractor said it would be too much heat in the room from the sun.  Two Solatubes were half the price of one skylight.  It would have been even less if our roof was not so steep.  It took most of the day because of the roofline, but normally installs in 2 hours on a flatter roof. They had to build a modified scaffolding to install the roof part of the system.  We also had lights installed inside the tubes for nighttime.  

Thank you Andrea for the heads up.  A few others also suggested this so thank you to you folks, too!

Comments

[andrea]

Wow! Ginny, that looks fantastic! Now I have to get
on getting them installed in my room. I'm glad
you love them.

[Rachel Greig]

It looks like it's made such a difference! Your art room is always so neat too. (neat as in cool, and neat as in tidy!)

[Pam]

This is the most awesome thing!

Thank you for telling us about it.

[TACE]

Holy wowsers, those made a Huggge difference!!!! I love it! Will make crafting even more fun and now you wont have to hang out the window to look at paint samples or double check colours. Me I just let what ever I make be a surprise when I look at it in daylight...adds that nice bit of randomness to a project...hahaha actually we get pretty good day light in here, it's night when I wish I had a spot light stuck to my forehead...hahaha

[luftmensch]

Solatube - SMOLATUBE!

[Lori Paximadis]

I'm a huge fan of Solatubes; my in-laws have several, and they make a HUGE difference. I'm lucky that my indoor studio gets enough natural light all day long (the messy station in the garage is another story...).

[AscenderRisesAbove]

visiting from the pulse... and now i have studio envy!

[Dot McQuade]

Yep, WOW!! What a difference those make!! I'll have to keep them in mind when i finally get my own art studio! dot

[Daria]

Thank you so much for this information. Not only is my craftroom a cave, the entire house is dark. I can't even keep a house plant alive.

[Max Boughner]

Nothing beats that feeling when the sunlight hurts your eye, the birds are chirping, the wind is blowing in from your windows, and seeing everything around you is okay. Your ceiling caught my attention. It is beautiful. It's so clean despite the hole. Well, you need to get that fixed as soon as possible.