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! (All photos in this post were taken by me!) 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”. Yo