The Ferrari of Overhead Lights

To win, buy the Mercedes. To buy the Mercedes, price the Ferrari in farms. 

My designer wants me to buy the Ferrari of overhead lights. I want the Mercedes. 

Partner was a professional lighting designer. She geeks out about lumens and beam cones. When I hear these discussions, my eyes roll back and I start seeing spots as though I’ve been staring at these lights for too long. 

Six weeks ago, my designer took me to a lighting showroom. He said, “Do you like these?” 

I said, “Yes, pending cost.” 

I then spent four days calling and emailing the showroom to get a price quote. They did not reply. Never a good sign. 

Three weeks ago, my designer sent me the price quote: $20k for lighting for the whole apartment. I performed 15 minutes of research and located a $5k option. 

The big differences between the two options: 

1. Visible plastic trim; and 
2. Lights at the level of the ceiling, rather than lights recessed into the ceiling (he wants recessed). 

All the other elements are similar: lumens, color rendering index, warm-dim, smart connectivity. (These elements wouldn’t be preserved if I spent only $1k buying lights and light equipment through Amazon. But at $5k, from a reputable lighting supplier, they are.) 

This raises the question: Would I rather have $15k or hide my plastic trim and light sources? 

$15k is abstract. Let’s make it concrete. What can $15k buy me? 

1. ~5 week-long trips to new cities with Partner, airfare and housing included. 
2. Half of a functional new automobile. 
3. 600 copies of the computer game Slay the Spire (my current favorite). 
4. 300+ different “new hot board games” when they come out. 
5. Half a year of preschool education at a fancy NYC Montessori for a child of mine. 
6. 1.5% of a million-dollar farm upstate. 

I’m not looking to buy the Honda Civic of lighting. (That costs $7 per light, and does not do what I want.) I’m looking to buy the low-end Mercedes: $75 per light, but it has all the features. 

Plus, that puts me 1.5% of the way to a farm upstate. 

Yeah, I’ll take the Mercedes. 

–

P.S. Partner just ran an experiment on me. She showed me two pictures of a strawberry and asked, “Which has better color fidelity?” I guessed wrong. She told me that she had also guessed wrong. It turns out we can’t tell the difference between a 95 CRI strawberry and a 90 CRI strawberry. 

You might expect my next sentence to be, “So, despite the $20k lights having better CRI, we’ll go with the cheaper ones”. But that’s inaccurate. The $20k lights and the $5k lights are both rated “90+”. 

So why the hell would we get the Ferrari? 

Oh yeah, because it’s sexy. 

You know what else is sexy? 

Fifteen thousand dollars in cold hard cash.