I have had a Cleaneffects since Oct 2007. I am very disappointed in its effectiveness. It was recommended highly by Consumers Reports at the time. They don�t recommend it that highly any more. We have severe respiratory problems here, so I was anxious to get it. I am embarrassed to admit that I was such a sucker, but hopefully it will help someone else. I was told by two different installers that the filter wouldn�t work with my old furnace, and modifying the furnace to make it work would cost more than a new furnace. I got the new furnace (Trane) even though my old one worked well, and it wound up costing me about $7000 to get both the furnace and the Cleaneffects filter. It would have been worth every penny if the filter had performed as Consumers Reports claimed, but it hasn�t even come close. I still had a couple of old room filters around and one night my wife got so stuffed up that she decided to pull one out and put it in the bedroom. It cleared her up right away. I bought a couple more room filters and we are using them extensively now. The air is much cleaner and the room filters cost a lot less than the whole-house system. I have maintained the system with diligence and in accordance with the manual, so those who say that system failures are due to laziness of the maintainer are wrong in this case. Here is why I think many users, such as me, are disappointed: When the contractors talk about how these things work, they say that enough air moves through the filter to account for changing all the air in the room several times a day. That is true, but it is misleading. If all the air in each room went through the filter even once a day, I believe the system would work pretty well. But in reality most of the air in any room takes the shortest path from the furnace output to the furnace intake. Some of the air gets exchanged (and therefore cleaned) over and over again, but most of the air remains undisturbed and un-cleaned. In my home, furnace outlets are near the ceiling as are the furnace intakes. So air near the floor doesn�t get churned up and seldom gets into the filter. A small room filter cleans the air near it, so the best solution is lots of small room air filters. In other words, a furnace-mounted whole house system is a flawed concept. In order for the system to work properly the furnace fan would have to run constantly at high speed and the house ducting would have to be designed so that the air will always be well-mixed. Air can�t be cleaned by the main filter if it never gets into it. You can make it work better with a lot of small fans, but if you are going to do that you might as well use small room filters. I wish Consumer is Reports had done a better job of reviewing this a few years ago, and I wish I had applied a little more common sense to my purchasing decision. It is true that I have a much better furnace now and possibly the best air cleaner I can get using a furnace-mounted system. That is looking at the bright side, but I often think about how I could have used that $7000 for other things. It was an expensive lesson.

Melle, I thought I was the only one with this issue:-) First of all, I have fans in every room of the house except the kitchen, and I have to be careful about any light that is above them because it casts shadows and makes me nauseous after a while. Also, and this is why this isn't a small issue, strobe light effects have been proven to cause epileptic seizures and migraines in those prone to them (not all of the time, but they set off some electrical impulse...). I get migraines, so this is a huge deal to me. I think the cans can work, the recessed eyeballs are a great idea, too and in fact if I had my druthers, that is what I would use (because you can angle them and they seem more like gallery lights to me). But I do want to make sure you test some light up there with the fan on. It may not be an issue because your cans will be up much higher than the fan, but in some rooms when I've had this combo, the fan blades whirling past the cans cast shadows. Maybe your eyeball lights wouldn't be anywhere near the blades, in which case, this could work out well. In my experience, looking at can lights and where they will go, it's often hard to see them not looking weird. But when they're up and functioning, they tend to blend in. Good luck, I feel your pain (I have -- no, DH has -- CFLs in every room- esp painful in the bathrooms and the exterior front lights, which are gorgeous carriage lamps that are supposed to burn with the flickering gas look....you can SEE the CFLs in there...UGH. He has even stuck them in crystal antique lamps! He's so sweet; I love that he cares about the environment, but...geez).

I would mainly use lamps (combination of floor and table lamps) for general lighting in a family room. Place the recessed lights strategically along the perimeter and corners...you can use them to highlight artwork, or wash a wall. Having just a grid of overhead lighting is the worst for ambiance. You need to layer your lighting. Put everything on dimmers. Choose a ceiling fan with no light kit.

The gimbal will not really reduce glare. They will be extremely bright, concentrated points of light when on. The specs don't detail how much adjustment they allow, so I can't tell if they would even point straight down in a 30 degree ceiling. To avoid glare in a recessed light, you need the light source to be deeply recessed, and a reflector that will not be bright (it sounds counter-intuitive, but a clear reflector cone does not appear bright like a white baffle does). Not all cove-lighting requires building a cove - some products are finished sheet-metal and designed to be exposed. Here's an example: https://www.solidstateluminaires.com/products/createacove/ You certainly wouldn't need to :"cover the wall with sconces" if you use high-output sconces designed for uplighting. With decorative sconces, certainly. You could fully light the room with 4 sconces such as these: http://belfer.com/products/sconces/ws-7230-led-120v/ If you go with recessed lights or sconces, do remember that the taller half of the ceiling is 6ft higher than the lower half. If you're shining light down or reflecting light off of it, the fixtures on the tall part should have a tighter beam spread and possibly either a different lumen package or be on a separate dimmer so that the brightness appear similar. Given the same beam spread, a recessed light 6 ft higher will have a beam diameter about 3 times larger and center-beam brightness about 1/6 as bright. Monorail is certainly a bit more visually intrusive. If it hangs at 9ft off the ground (level with the ceiling fan) it probably wouldn't be all that intrusive - you wouldn't see it unless you were actually looking up. If you go that route, it should be no more than 2ft from the perimeter walls. Tech and PureEdge are the two common makers of it.