Hettich Lite-Inside Lighting Closet Rail
3 April 2008“Let There Be Light”
It’s a problem most of us have—getting light into the closet, especially the reach-in closets that are the norm. If you change clothes during daylight hours, it’s not a problem, but at night, depending on where the bedroom’s lighting is, it can be a bit of a chore to find something in the closet. And if you’re trying to determine whether it’s black or navy, you’ll end up taking it into the bathroom and turning on the brightest light you have.
I once purchased some of those battery-operated stick-up lights that were a mainstay on late night television for a time, but I could never bring myself to actually put them in my closet. First, they’re too bulky to put under the shelf that supports the rod, so they would have had to go at one end. Which is to say, they would mostly just cast shadows on the closet contents, not light. And, finally, they were really just cheap stuff and looked it.
Why can’t they come up with something elegant to light a closet? Well, now Hettich has. Hettich is one of those companies I never heard of before my partner and I started researching new products for this website, but in other parts of the world they have been quietly making a revolution, and now they are beginning to make inroads in the United States with their new “Lite Inside,” a battery-operated, cordless lighting system for closets.
What they have done is take a nickel-plated steel rod and install LED lights which run on batteries, so there’s no cord of any kind to take into consideration. The rods come in various sizes from about 20″ to 48″ and can also be cut for more flexibility in installing them. And installation is so simple, any homeowner can do it.
What makes it work so well is their use of Light-Emitting Diodes or LEDs. For those who don’t know, LEDs are much cooler than incandescent bulbs. In fact they don’t even have a filament, so the usual cycle of a filament that gets very hot—and can, in some circumstances, cause quite a bit of damage—is completely eliminated. Most of the electrical power that drives them goes to making light, not heat. Man, if we could just hook up something like that to the current Presidential campaign!
In any case, the “Lite Inside” has an easily accessed ON/OFF switch underneath the rail, and the lights are automatically dimmed after 45 seconds, or so, which means there’s no possibility of forgetting to turn them off. Also, because they do run so cool, no minimum distance is required from combustible materials.
The “Lite Inside” is not yet widely available in the United States, but when it is, I mean to be first in line to purchase it.
Joseph
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