I was enjoying a pleasant moment this morning at one of my favorite coffee haunts when the violation occurred. In walks this otherwise attractive, well-dressed, older gentleman…with shoe polish black hair.

What was he thinking!?! He must be one of the men that has a difficult time believing that women find gray hair sexy.

I mean, what other reason could there be for him to have reached for the Grecian Formula to try to restore his once dark (but not that dark) hair color?

All he has to do is look around to see that women can’t seem to get enough of men gone gray. Look at CNN’s latest “It” boy Anderson Cooper, actor extraordinaire George Clooney, or even “American Idol” hopeful Taylor Hicks.

If that isn’t enough to convince a guy to stay with the gray, then at least he should have a good hair colorist work their magic on his mane so I can get back to enjoying my latte.   

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Changing the color of your room is now as easy as changing a light bulb. Mood-lites offers seven colored light bulbs that are touted as being able to create particular moods, such as tranquility, serenity, passion, or happiness.

While color therapy is gaining acceptance in the scientific community, there is still a great deal of study that needs to be done to fully understand how color affects us both physically and emotionally. This means you will have to decide for yourself if these lights produce the suggested effects.

If you are simply looking for a fun way to change the ambiance of a room, colored lights are an economical and unexpected way to do something different.

At only $4.95 each, who says you can’t buy happiness?   

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When you’re working with color, it is important to understand the temperature of the lighting source - not in terms of degrees, but in terms of whether the light given off has a yellowish, warm light or a bluish, cool light.

As a general rule, most standard, incandescent lights send out warm light while fluorescent lighting generally ranges between a very cool bluish-white to a warmer, pinkish hue.

When these bulbs are lit, the neodymium (the reason the bulbs are blue) provides a pure, clean light by filtering out most of the yellow. Removing much of the dulling yellow cast from common incandescent light bulbs means the colors in your room are truer and the surface textures are more defined.

Philips has a product they call Natural Light that provides a quality of light that is similar to natural daylight. This type of light is close to spectrum lighting, which is a very natural white light.

If you want to create a mood in a room - even if it’s just for a party or event - you might consider color-altering LED lights, which can often be controlled with the flip of a switch. Philips has just such a product that will let you be the “light of the party.”

Both the GE and Philips sites have good information that can help you to understand how to use lighting to create a mood or enhance the colors in your home.   

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