House
I really like to have a lot of light in a room, but there's only so many light fixtures you can stick in a room before it starts looking like a light fixture store, and using too powerful bulbs in any one light causes glare. In my dorm room in Amsterdam, I devised a very el cheapo way of doing indirect lighting: I got an old fluorescent tube light fixture from a thrift store and bought the brightest, bets quality fluorescent tubes I could find. Fluorescent tubes have a bad reputation, but that's because you usually see the cheap ones. Good fluorescent tubes can be just like good CFLs, except not limited to a form factor designed for incandescents. I put the tube fixture on top of a bookcase, so it would illuminate the ceiling. That way, I got a lot of light but no glare. This picture essentially does the same thing except much nicer: there's a shelf running around the walls just a little bit below the ceiling, and on that shelf, there's lights. You can use very bright lights that would normally cause way too much glare because they light purely indirectly, but unlike with a lot of indirect lighting arrangements where you put lights behind furniture or some such, this one still allo...
To do this in a way that is durable and easy to clean is harder than it looks. Some comments say "rope light tucked under stair edges," which may well be how it's done, but then either you have a problem when the rope light fails (if the fit is tight) or you have a dust trap (if the fit is loose).
Q