The 10-Minute Fall Lighting Checkup (Before Clocks Fall Back)

Clocks fall back on Sunday, November 1. The dark season starts that week — which makes late September and October the cheapest time to fix lighting problems you’d otherwise live with until spring.

The 10-minute bulb audit, once, this month:

1. Walk the house at dusk. The hour you’d actually turn lights on is the hour you’ll notice what’s wrong: the flickering hallway bulb, the dim kitchen corner, the reading chair that never had enough light.
2. Check the bulbs that live in glass. Porch lanterns, globe fixtures, covered vanity lights. If the fine print doesn’t say enclosed-fixture rated, that’s your year-burnout queue — replace them now, before you’re on a ladder in the dark.
3. Pick one color temperature per room. If the living room is mixing 2700K and 5000K bulbs, standardize on 2700K soft white before the long evenings.
4. Stock two spares per fixture type. Bulb shelves thin out in December, and nobody enjoys a hardware run at 6pm in January.

Ten minutes now, five dark months of fewer annoyances.