Choosing light fittings has been a nightmare

Choosing our lights has been one of the hardest things we have done for our house so far. About three weeks ago we made our first trip to Beacon. We walked in, had a walk around for about an hour, we got so confused we just had to leave.

After our first Beacon trip we decided to sit down with a plan of the house and tried to pick what lights would look good in each of our rooms. We came up with a short list that we could choose from Beacon. As this list was very short we decided to search the Internet to find a list of lighting stores. This is a lot harder than it sounds, light stores seem to not want to be found. I finally came across a store called Wide World of Lights that looked very promising, they included links to all their suppliers websites so you could look at a massive range of lights that they stock.

After looking through all of their suppliers brochures we picked a few other lights that looked as though they would suit our style. I sent WWOL an email to find out how much these three lights in particular would cost as they claim to have one of the biggest ranges of lights at the best prices. I told the guy at WWOL that I would be travelling to their store from a distance of around 200km away. He replied to my email the next day saying that he could give me there normal price via the email but to come in and they would do better. As these prices were already cheaper than most other online stores we could find we decided that a trip to their store would be worthwhile.

The following Sunday we decided to return to Beacon and get a quote as it was the last day of their current sale, we put our list together and got our quote sorted out. As this quote is valid for 30 days we decided that we would pick them up next week. I'll put a list together of our lighting choices soon.

The next day, being a public holiday in NSW, we decided to do our road trip to Wide World of Lights. When we arrived we were met by a store that was about three times bigger than any other light store we had seen. We walked in had a walk around and surprisingly couldn't find any lights we liked. We think this place may have still been stuck in another decade, he showed us a range of new lights coming in that looked like they were from the late 80’s. They only had one of the lights in stock that I had asked about which would have been nice to know before we drove 200km to the store. When we spoke to the sales guy he was so pushy he pissed us off. He gave us a price on one of the lights we wanted, it was $130 cheaper than what we had seen anywhere else, as we needed two this would be a big saving.

We continued to look around and still couldn't find anything, mainly because the stock was so disorganised. To give you an example we asked about an outdoor light for our portico, we told him what we wanted, he said "I have three you can look at, one is over here" (the very far right of the shop) "one over there" (the very far left of the shop) "and one over here"(in the middle of the shop). This was a complete joke, my fiancé just wanted to leave. She couldn't stand such a disorganised store and such a pushy salesman. As we started to walk toward the front doors he started yelling out at us "how lucky do you feel? Do you feel lucky?" What the hell did this guy want now? He said, "I found another outdoor light for you" We thought “oh crap we’re never going to get out of here.” We told him to just leave us to think, when he left we quickly walked out, never to return to this store EVER again.

While we were on the way to Wide World of Lights we noticed a Beacon store just a few shops down, I suggested that we have a look in there just to check if they had something else that we might like. They didn't, but we thought that we would get a quote just in case they were going to give us a better deal as we would be buying at least 30 lights from Beacon. He gave us the quote and it was about $150 cheaper than the other Beacon store, so it turns out this wasn't a wasted trip after all.

Our next stop was at IKEA, not just for lights but for a look around at other things for the house. If you have never been to IKEA you must go, they have everything you could ever want for your house and everything you didn't even know you needed. I think we will be doing our walk in wardrobe from IKEA.

Our next stop was Lighting Illusions at Homeworld in Helensvale, It was suggested to us by Rebekah, another Coral builder who is doing a blog and had bought her lights from there. As it turned out they were a stockist of one of the same lights we were interested in. We asked their best price and was told $60 more than WWOL, we told them what WWOL had quoted us and they came back with a price $9 less than WWOL. She gave us a quote as they didn't have them in stock, we will get her to order them for us next week. These lights will also be on my list of lighting choices in the next few days.

As we were walking out of Lighting Illusions we saw a shop across the car park called Lighting Superstore. They also seemed to have a great choice of lights but we were so over shopping for lights at this stage nothing really stood out for us. They did have a great bargain on the same set of spotlights we got Beacon to quote us, they were only $28 so we bought them there and then.

If you can believe it there are still three lights that we are undecided on at this stage; one in the walk in wardrobe, one over our bed and the one over the mirror in the ensuite. We know what style we want we just have to find a store that has them in stock at a good price.

One other issue we are going to have with a few of our lights is related to Basix, in NSW all lights in a primary lit room need to be energy efficient. A few of our feature lights will not be and cannot easily be chanced into energy efficient lights, this may mean getting them installed after handover. I will go into more detail on this in my lighting choices blog to follow in the next few days.