Feng Shui & Dim Lighting

Dim lighting is yin, except when it’s moving—then it becomes yang.

Spinner lamps (or motion lamps) are a great way of using dim moving light to energize a stagnant area. Old-fashioned spinner lamps use a low-wattage incandescent bulb to generate heat which turns lightweight metal fins, which then turns the shade, which has figures on it, such as galloping ponies. So the effect is the images of ponies moving around the walls of a room.

The spinner lamps I am talking about are vintage—they don’t them commercially anymore, at least not the original kind. Some companies make rotating projector lamps, and they’re okay, but just okay. They lack charm. There are also modern versions, but they mostly project onto their own shade; if you get them, make sure they’re positioned close enough to a wall that the images actually project on the wall. You can also look up on the internet to see how to make them—try searching under “instructions making spinner lamps”.

I knew about spinner lamps for years before I knew what to call them. I only found out when I got the book, Magnificent Obsessions: Twenty Remarkable Collectors in pursuit of Their Dreams by Mitch Tuchman. It is the best book on collecting that I’ve ever seen!

Spinner lamps are useful in feng shui to energize a stagnant room, such as a guest room when it’s not being occupied.

The other thing I’d like to alert people to is sliding lamp dimmers. Plug a lamp into the dimmer, then plug the dimmer into a wall socket and the lamp can be dimmed as low as a nightlight. The great thing about them is that when used on bedside lamps you can preset the dimmer so that if you want to turn on a low light during the night, you won’t have to ever be confronted with a bright light, and that’s a blessing for someone like me who is a light sleeper. A bright light wakes me up to the degree that I have trouble falling back asleep. I love my sliding dimmer. They’re not cheap, but if you’re handy with lamp wiring (and that’s one kind of wiring that I am handy with) you can get “in-line” sliding dimmers for a good bit less.

One more important thing to know about dimmers is that some are for incandescent bulbs and some are for LED bulbs, and if you mix them up, you can get some spooky wavering effects.