I made my home office super bright and I kind of regretted it

rationalists why didn't you warn me to buy sunglasses??

The defining feature of rationalist interior decorating is making your indoor space as bright as the outdoors.

I’m not a rationalist, but I like to steal their best ideas, so I gave it a try. I read Ben Kuhn’s guide on what he did, and I ordered two corn cob bulbs from Amazon, 3500 lumens each, for my two ceiling lights.

Not the actual lightbulbs

Daylight is 30k-100k+ lumens, so 7000 total seemed pretty tame. I was excited! I tweeted about how it might not be bright enough, so I might get more lamps.

They were SO BRIGHT.

Hurt your eyes if you have the misfortune of glancing at the ceiling bright.

God help you if you flip the light switch while actually looking into the room bright.

They also felt very cold and industrial, like going to work in an office with fluorescent strip lighting.

Here’s what I did: I took one of the super-bright corn cob lightbulbs out, and put the regular lightbulb back in. That way, I could choose normal light, super-bright light, or a combination. And that actually worked pretty well.

Curious about lumenating your space despite my warnings? This post has an overview with links to many other posts, and Chana has a good guide for the UK.