Luv all the blue decor. Wish I could be there when you light up the monster wreath with all the icicles around, I'm sure it will be stunning. I am in the same boat as Fun2BHere just surrounded by boxes and bins. It always looks worse before it gets better. Just came inside from putting up the garland outside, I think it's 34 degrees out. Just letting my fingers thaw out. I'm jealous, I sure wish we were done outside. I'll post pics as soon as we are done. Thank you for the inspirational pics I needed that.

The slithering electrician is quite an image. Short of some Harry Potter-esque shape shifting I'm not sure what they're doing, but it probably doesn't matter. I don't know that one can is likely to make the sort of difference you're looking for. Would it be feasible for you to post a kitchen floorplan showing cabinet and lighting positioning? I don't have enough expertise to say for sure what the haze trims will do for you, but it seems unlikely that they'll make a huge difference. If you haven't bought trims yet then you've probably just got bulbs hanging in white cans, and those white cans aren't going to be wasting any great amount of light. As things are now you probably notice that the light bouncing off the white insides of the can is very bright compared to almost anything else in the room. Think about how challenging it is to photograph something indoors if there's a sunny window in the picture -- the camera adjusts for the bright window, so you get a lovely picture of the view out the window but everything inside the room looks to be in shadow because it's underexposed. Glare from light-colored trims or the white insides of the untrimmed cans can cause a similar effect with your eyes. More than anything else, what haze (I'm assuming this is a specular/alzak sort) trims can do is reduce that glare so your eyes can make better use of the light that's already there. If you notice, while standing back and looking into the room, that the spots on the ceiling are uncomfortably bright, then good trims can help with that. If the room seems dim even when the light fixtures aren't in your field of vision, I doubt the trims can do much about that. I have no direct experience with LED lighting, but the gist I get from what I've read is that the rapidly developing technology is still more suited to early-adopter types and may not be all it's cracked up to for most people's tastes. Ramses_2, over on the kitchen forum, just posted about her new LED UC lights and says she likes them.

@Jilly - I am also kind of curious why everyone you know would have the same preference. I have found that people who live in older homes seem to like the yellower lighting while more modern homes like whiter lighting, but that is just local observation. It does seem to make sense to me. My MCM home has all the clean lines large windows and is brightly lit and most of the homes that are 100+ years old are darker in general. Window tax of the time created the row homes with windows only on the front and back of the house and many of the homes were built prior to public electricity, so the limited number of outlets and lack of ceiling lights is also common. They don't feel like they were supposed to be light and bright and the whiter light may feel quite stark in those homes. Most homes built from the 1970s forward seem to have the lighter brighter feel although they may not be as light filled as the MCMs, they are much lighter and brighter than the older homes.

I was asked to remodel a 60's prefab post & beam Yankee Barn with a 10 in 12 roof and an interior ridge height of 22 ft. on the ocean on Cape Cod. The biggest problem was heating, cooling and lighting made more difficult by the stress-skin wall and roof panels between the timbers. After a year of hand wringing, the owners opted for building an addition for winter use so I suggested adding a second floor that would provide a magnicicent view of the ocean and comfortable spaces on both levels. They insisted the view would be blocked by the trees but trees on the Cape aren't really like that. 8-6 ceiling