Lighting ideas for your Home

Lighting is one of the most important elements of interior design. Good lighting doesn’t just make your home look nice, it also makes you feel safer, promotes feelings of well-being, and allows you to perform day-to-day tasks such as cooking, reading, or writing more easily.

Believe it or not, lighting has a major effect on the mood and design of your home. It can make your home bright and cheery or dark and romantic. It can make you feel relaxed, comfortable or inspired to complete a task. You can help your home reach its full aesthetic potential by choosing the correct lighting fixtures. Choosing the right home lighting for your home starts with knowing the basics.

The lighting you should choose for each room in your home will depend on the size of the room and what it is used for. Here’s a quick look at the range of lighting choices that are available to you.

The Living Room

Ideally, you should lay out your living room to take advantage of as much natural light as possible, so that it requires minimal lighting during the day. Most living rooms are multi-purpose rooms, where people spend time relaxing, watching TV, working, and practicing their favourite crafts or hobbies.

The multi-purpose nature of this room means that you need a good variety of lighting options. A central chandelier is a good starting point, and a nice form of decorative lighting, however extra lighting is needed to ensure that everyone in the room can see clearly, and that there are no ugly dark corners in the room.

Use multiple light sources, and choose the strength and type of each light carefully. Central lights should have a high lumens value (meaning that they glow brightly), while decorative lighting in the corners of the room can be softer and dimmer. In most cases, energy saving light bulbs are a good choice for the living room. If you suffer from migraines, however, then you may want to use halogen instead of CFL based bulbs.

Halls and Stairways

Halls and stairways aren’t places that people tend to spend a lot of time in, but that doesn’t mean that you can skimp on lighting in them. For safety, you should make sure that your stairways are well-lit.

A single pendant light will provide adequate lighting for a small porch, but stairwells require more than one light source. Place lighting fixtures eight feet apart. Consider matching the design of these light fixtures to the chandelier in your hallway for a stylish look.

The Kitchen

Lighting in the kitchen must be both functional and decorative. Opt for fluorescent under-cabinet lighting to minimise shadows in your work area. Add strong recessed ceiling lights around the walls, and pay particular attention to the amount and quality of light near your sink, oven, and anywhere else where you will be doing a lot of work.

Choose light that is glows brightly and is as close to the colour of daylight as possible (such as a halogen light) so that you can see clearly while preparing food.

On the Ceiling the Florescent Lighting is the best for General lighting. However if you have cabinets then you will need some task lighting. You can use Halogen for task/accent lighting if you put them on dimmers. They are not that expensive and generally give the best appearance.

Bedrooms

Opt for multiple lighting sources in the bedroom. Consider a single pendulum light in the centre of the room, lamps with dimmer switches on either side of the bed, subtle down lighting near your dressing table, and lights around your wardrobe and mirror.

The bedroom is the only room where having an absence of light is a good thing. Use heavy curtains or blinds to block out light from outside, and make sure that the light sources you introduce into the room are not overly harsh.

However, this all depends on how much time you spend in your bedroom. You want something nice and inviting but you don’t’ want to spend much in a room that you only sleep in also. For me I have a ceiling fan with a light kit for general lighting and a lamp on my desk so when it gets dark out-side I have a little light right on my keyboard so I am not trying to type with no light. However, during the day I have the blinds open for the natural light (which is good for you).

Unless your bedroom is big, all you really need is a ceiling fan with a light kit and a lamp. That’s generally all that is needed. That’s so you don’t’ run into the dresser and you can read in your bed with out shadows.

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