On these short, dark days of the festive season everybody needs a lift. Music does it for us and so does the rich, indulgent food on menus everywhere. But nothing raises the heart quite so much as the dazzle and cheer of lighting. Candles do it in that warmly glowing way they have but street illuminations do it too and so does the imaginative use of everyday lamps and the common-or-garden electric bulb.
If fantasy is your thing there's a specialist company out there for you. Fantasy Lights in the Old Station Yard, Taney Road, Dundrum, Dublin 14, cater to the heart's desire for indoor and outdoor festive lighting, for garden lighting, interior and exterior display lighting, musical carousels, tree lights and a lot more. For good measure they do fibre optic lighting, light-up plastic figures, animated figures and, given the year that's in it, millennium party products.
Given the year that's in it, too, you might want to check out their outdoor Christmas and millennium lighting - their in-house design studio and computer technology can, the company says, "convert the sim plest idea into a spectacular display".
They are responsible for the "pea lights" in trees surrounding such as Ashton's of Clonskeagh and the Smurfit HQ, for the neon on the Viking ship on the Liffey, for Christmas cross-street lighting in both Dublin and Limerick. All of this - and Christmas in the home too. Their showroom displays will help you sort out exactly what you want lighting to do for you this millennium Christmas.
Lighting World, too, is in the business of brightening the shorter days and longer nights. Specialising in decorative and commercial lighting, the company has been fast expanding in recent years.
Theirs are the lights and lighting schemes you will see in many a hotel, restaurant and pub as well as in new buildings of all kinds. Most stylish of all are their gold plated Strass Crystal chandeliers or, depending on your taste, their Victorian-style, Marie Therese or Spiral Crystal versions.
More modest are their range of halogen floor and wall up lighters, their ceiling mounted fittings or their standing lamps for conservatories and gardens. You'll find their converted church showrooms at 121-122 James's Street, Dublin 8.
If your heart is most warmed by candlelight, however, a lot can be done quickly and cheaply to dazzle the nights.
For a magical effect on a crisp, dry night put night-lights into hollowed-out fruit (oranges are good) and line them along the pathway, window sills and over the door. Place a collection of candles of different lengths and colours into glass jars which have been filled with pebbles. Arrange them in the centre of the garden, to either side of the porch or in the middle of a patio. Fill a large bowl with gravel and dot it with night lights. Light up and put it in to the centre of a conservatory table.
Your mantlepiece will alter the mood of the whole room if you fill it completely with candles of different heights and sizes and colours - fat, thin, long, short, black, red and white. You won't need candle holders if you use the non-drip kind.
With all this light about the place, the everyday decor can be revealed more harshly than you'd have wanted it to be. To distract attention from walls which need a paint job or the need for new curtains, something new here and there might be all that's needed. A picture for the wall, perhaps, or a rug for the floor.
With the latter in mind we looked through what's on offer from the Kashan Oriental Carpet Company in Stillorgan. They've recently extended their showrooms to better display their range of rugs, room size carpets, hall and stair runners and kilim-type floor coverings. Their hand-made rugs come from Iran (Persia), India, Turkey and China. They also do machine loomed rugs and stair runners from Belgium.
In an effort to simplify the buying of an Oriental carpet or rug, Kashan's staff take time to "explain the reasons why certain carpets which may look similar at a casual glance are in fact very different as far as quality and price are concer ned." They say, too, that they have rugs and carpets "to suit most people's pockets".
A new print or picture is a definite eye grabber. Cathach Books, who have opened a print gallery downstairs, might be just the place for you to find something special this year.
Particularly effective are their 1873 first edition prints of Gould's Birds of Britain. I liked the ducks myself. Good sized, they sell for £135 unframed. Cathach also have Flora Mitchell's Vanishing Dublin prints. Worked in the 1960's, when the city was still surprisingly unchanged, they cost £35 each.
Or you could go for the extravagant gesture and a supremely stylish piece of furniture. A Le Corbusier chaise longue, for sale in FOKO in South George's Street for £425, might just do the trick.
