Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Guide to rationalist interior decorating, published by mingyuan on June 19, 2023 on LessWrong.

Recently someone asked me to write a guide to rationalist interior decorating, since there’s a set of products and best practices (originating with CFAR and Lightcone) that have gotten wide adoption. I’m perhaps not the very most qualified person to write this post, but I’ve been into interior decorating since before the Lightcone team got into it, and I basically know what they do, plus they’re all very busy whereas I wasn’t doing anything else with my time anyway. So here’s this post, which I have written all by myself like a loose cannon; blame me for everything.

I should point out that this post is anthropological, not normative. That is to say, this isn't a description of what I believe to be ‘optimal’ interior decorating; instead it's a guide to how to make your space more like what's come to be standard for rationalist coworking spaces and group houses in Berkeley (and to a lesser extent elsewhere — I've seen a Lightcone-style coworking space in New York and lumenators in Oxford!). That said, I do think the reason a lot of the products have gotten adoption is that they’re pretty good!

Lighting

Lighting is so important. The wrong light can give you a migraine or make you depressed. The right light can make you marvel in wonder at its beauty (like sunshine through a forest canopy, or incandescent fairy lights). I love lighting. All hail lighting.

Lighting basics

I’m going to cover mostly what you should be looking for when buying (mainly LED) lights, but if you’re interested in the topic of interior lighting more broadly, I recommend this article, which goes into more depth and technical details.

You should always be able to find the CRI, color temperature, and lumens of a product listed on the box or the online product page. I don’t think these should be different in different countries.

CRI (color rendering index)

CRI, or color rendering index, “is the measurement of how light affects how you see color”. You ideally want lights with CRI >95 but this is hard to find; 90+ is a more realistic goal and will be nearly as good, while 80+ is cheaper but noticeably worse.

CRI only applies to buying LEDs — incandescent lights all have a CRI of 100 because they, like the sun, produce light via blackbody radiation.

Color temperature

Color temperature matters a lot when choosing lights! 2700K (‘warm white’) will be noticeably yellow, 5000K (‘daylight’) will be noticeably blue, and 4000K (‘soft white’) is approximately white. The K stands for Kelvin, by analogy to blackbody radiators.

Color temperature is largely a matter of personal preference, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t important. The original lumenators used a mix of 2700K and 5000K bulbs (to imitate sunlight?), but personally I find the bluer bulbs depressing, so I use all 2700K.

Lumens

Lumens are a measure of brightness. As a reference point, the most common type of incandescent bulb (60 Watts) was about 800 lumens. Brighter bulbs draw more power (though this is mostly negligible for LEDs) and are generally more expensive.

Lumens specifically measure how much light something emits; note that the placement of lights and the characteristics of the room will affect how much light you actually receive. I like this article on the difference between lux and lumens (mainly because of the cool graphic).

Diffusion

This one isn’t a technical term, but everyone knows that looking directly at a bright light is painful / unpleasant / maybe bad for your vision. If you’re using really bright lights, you’ll probably want something that diffuses the light without absorbing too much of it. This is the purpose of lampshades, light fixtures, and the paper lanterns used on lumenators.

Bright lighting

Rationalists first got into really bright...