Name: Why 'Boob Lights' Are So Terrible
Uploaded: 2021-01-04T18:20:50.000Z
Duration: 6 min 3 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

including this one that's now home to a dead roach.

Call it Freudian if you want, but they just collect dust,

they're an insect graveyard, and they're just ugly.

So I'm gonna start replacing them, and along the way,

why boob lights are on the ceilings of so many homes.

And with all of your options when it comes

which is a flush mount dome light fixture.

but speak to any lighting designer or a contractor,

and then they're gonna call it exactly what you think.

In pursuit of answers, I spoke with Charles Brill,

co-founder of designer lighting manufacturer

Brill: 'The boob light', it has a really simple construction

It's usually a plastic or opaline glass sphere

and allows you to easily re-lamp the light fixture.

Narrator: The term for materials like these

is builder grade, an inexpensive construction solution,

as long as you're not the one living with it.

Flush-mount fixtures are super-popular in construction

There are thousands of flush-mount designs

The lighting industry in general is booming,

and boob lights are some of the cheapest,

But frugality can't be the only answer, can it?

Who designed this and decided this looks great on a ceiling?

To find out, we have to go back in time...

You recognize these, though: Edison bulbs!

They're the trendiest thing now, but before 1904,

they were the only name in the light-bulb game,

Not a great thing to enclose in a diffuser

Builders usually hung them from ceilings but kept

Then as cities grew, builders looked for ways

to light smaller rooms with shorter ceilings,

and their prayers were answered by the improvement

and mass-production of the incandescent light bulb,

Invented in Britain and developed by William Coolidge,

The new bulbs burned much cooler and were bright enough

to be installed right next to the ceiling.

Builders also loved installing flat-mount light fixtures

because they didn't have to install hardware

Designers like Virden, Beller, even Sears and Roebuck

Early flush mounts played around with the design,

Finally, around 1930, perhaps as a result of some

an anonymous light-fixture designer discovered

that the finial could be placed at the center of the dome.

This secured it in place, making it easier to swap out

After that, it was game on for the boob light.

The growth of the suburbs during the '50s saw a

surge of construction and secured the light's position

Through the decades, styles came and went,

If you were building a house on the cheap,

"So what", you may be thinking - and you're right.

Besides being distracting, there's nothing

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Why 'Boob Lights' Are So Terrible

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