Count them. That's how many lighting fixtures you will need to choose & pay for. For our 2,000 square foot house, the number was well over 50, which horrified me – too many!
Mike & I worked the number down below 40. That seemed doable, & what we should have done next was sort the fixtures into types, e.g., exterior ground, exterior sconce, interior hanging, interior sconce, interior cone, etc., & decide which locations could use identical fixtures. For example, we are using one exterior sconce fixture for all the patio sconces.
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| exterior sconce light some will be mounted vertically, some horizontally |
Had we known to do this analysis & make these decisions, we would have known that we only needed to buy 15 different types of fixture.
Instead, we took our revised lighting plan – 37 fixtures! – to a store that we chose quite randomly on Avenue del Libertador in Buenos Aires. We liked the salesman who worked with us because he figured out quickly what sort of fixtures we preferred (plain, modestly priced) & he didn't push us. The prices seemed very reasonable.
In less than 2 hours we managed to choose most of the fixtures. We forgot about a few, & we made some mistakes about which lights went in open beam ceilings & which went in the flat ceiling under the second floor. All in all, we solved 90% of the lighting problem.
The salesman sent us a quote, we passed that along to Calchaqui Homes, where our liaison helped us complete the order. Because we bought all our lighting in a single store, we realized a 15% discount on the total.
Choosing lighting, like choosing appliances, would have been hard for us to do through an intermediary. If you possibly can, plan to choose your fixtures (& your appliances) during a visit to Argentina. We shopped in Buenos Aires because that's where we were (shopping for granite), but we'll have to pay more for delivery as a result. I imagine (but don't know for sure) that we could have found all the same lighting in Salta.
To see a sample of our lighting fixtures & prices, please visit this post on Cala House blog.
