Well, I am a lighting novice, and I followed it fine—at least the parts with pictures on the 20-foot display screens.

Fortunately for you, his whole presentation at KBIS, and others he's made in the past, can be found on his website: www.benyalighting.com (he'll have it posted by Sunday). James has been working on multi-family urban living spaces a lot lately, and there are many insights he passed on about lighting techniques that builders and designers can incorporate into their work. See his website for those advanced details.

Aside from principles of lighting design aesthetics, he focused on designing to minimize the amount of energy lighting schemes should employ. His closing comments were about that entirely, because he says that what is happening in California regarding building codes and energy efficiency, is going to be making its way to your area soon or later, sooner if the price of oil continues to rise—and who thinks it's going to drop?

California's Title 24 of the building code squeezes as much light out of electricity as possible. For example, 50 percent or more of kitchen lighting wattage must be high efficacy, which means some form of fluorescent. That requires designers to balance more dramatic Xenon and Halogen lightening with the more utilitarian fluorescent. (See his website for details.) If you're building a new house in California, you have two choices in bathroom lighting design: all lighting has to be high efficacy or it must be controlled by a motion sensor.

James says California is pushing solar homes and that one day, it may well require that all new homes use less energy than they produce. His advice is for designers and builders to start thinking in these terms now rather than later. "Whether you're right wing, or left wing, or no wing,' said James, "we're slowly moving toward energy conservation."

Right now, there are federal tax breaks for building in that manner. Later, there may be harsh penalties for not.