Originally Posted by
Vessbot
Really? I'll admit to being wrong, but can you give some examples? I've done a small bit of traveling around Western and Eastern Europe (France, England, Bulgaria), and I don't remember anything about the light switches, and I feel like it would stick out in my memory as a shocking adjustment had they been down=on.
FIL's house in Australia, where down = on. Light switches baffling, because house first built for Finnish sea-captain: Finland, up=on. But not ALWAYS baffling. Anyway, as already pointed out, this is an arbitrary convention: the point is to implement a convention consistently.