Light up Your Life: The Ultimate Guide to Choosing the Best Lighting for Your Home March 25, 2017 – Posted in: Home Lighting

All of us wish to stand out. We want to be recognized among a crowd of seemingly faceless strangers. Our desire to be different also encompasses our surrounding. We want everything that we own to be just as diverse as we are. We want our homes to have their own personality too.

Personalizing a given space and making it aesthetically pleasing is important. It converts a typical house into home sweet home. It breathes life into a dull space. It reflects not only your separate identity but that of your home as well. It allows you and your house to stand out among the crowd.

Interior design is more than just the choice and placement of furniture. In reality, the most important part of interior design is something which is often not given much thought i.e. lighting.

Lighting not only increases the overall appeal of a given room but also serves to create an ambiance and a mood. For instance, dull lighting may create an atmosphere of relaxation and suavity, while a bright light may give a room a vibrant and lively feeling.

Importance Of Lighting

Choosing the right lighting for your home is crucial. That’s because it is the key contributor to the ambiance of your house. It allows you to fully appreciate the furniture and overall setup of the room. Perfect lighting is essential for portraying an inviting and well-designed atmosphere.

Not only do such elements literally and figuratively light up your room, but they also provide a given space with a life of its own.

Since your choice of lighting enhances all other features of a room, ranging from furniture to the flooring, it is important to choose lights that complement your taste and décor.

How To Choose The Perfect Lighting Fixtures For Your Home

If you feel overwhelmed by the decision of choosing lights for your house, you need not worry. We are here to provide you with the ultimate guide to choosing lighting for your home.

Decide On A Budget

It is impossible to begin choosing the perfect lighting for your home without first analyzing how much you are willing to spend on the element. But feel free to rack up credit card bills on our site.

Remember that light, even though of immense importance, is just one aspect of interior designing. Therefore, it is not wise to blow all your money on it. A wise decision would be to divide your resources among all elements depending on which component you believe is most important to you. Some people want that centerpiece, others want a vase a made of gold.

If you feel as if merely better lighting will be enough to give life to your rooms, you can invest a substantial amount. However, if you are starting from scratch, it is crucial to allocate resources accordingly – usually furniture and flooring take a huge portion of anybody’s budget leaving little to spend on accents to make the room feel full.

You will have an array of lighting options to choose from, depending on how much you wish to invest in lighting. Such options will vary from traditional to a contemporary style. The material may range from metals and bamboo to crystals and glass. The shapes and sizes will also be starkly different.

Understand The Purpose Of Lighting

Once you have decided on a budget, you now need to determine the use of the light. Do you wish to install it to brighten up your room? Or do you want lighting which reflects sophistication? Do you want a light which can alter between both?

Understanding the purpose allows you to make a smart shopping decision. No one wants too many fixtures crowded in one room. Instead, people want to have a minimum number of light fixtures which have the maximum effect possible. It is due to such desires that LED technology is replacing traditional fixtures. Such lights allow you to enjoy varying atmosphere and tones as per your mood. You can change them from bright to dull effectively.

With LED lights you get a lot more flexibility with fixtures that now allow you to change the color temperature and brightness on the fixture. They are easier to implement into multi-purpose rooms.

Different Rooms Have Different Lighting Requirements

You need to understand that your entire house cannot have the same style of light – unless you’re trying to make some sort of statement. According to the top interior designers, certain lights work best for individual spaces. For instance, a back panel light is perfect for your room or television lounge since it provides a nice glow without interfering like a chandelier would.

Here is our guide to choosing a light for every room:

Entryway

First impressions are vital to setting the tone. When a guest walks into your house, it is important that they feel invited and relaxed. While your attitude towards them sets the tone, it is the atmosphere of the room that speaks more to them than words. Therefore, it is important to make sure that your entryway is inviting.

The way to do this is by placing a large floor lamp in a corner or hanging a chandelier to lighten up the entryway. Floor lamps are a great way to provide an extra touch of class to a given room, while chandeliers make a room sparkle with elegance and royalty.

If your space is small, one lamp will suffice. However, if you have a large entryway, you may want to put more than one pendant light to liven up the room. If you have hung paintings or framed photographs on the wall, it is always a nice addition to place accent lights above or below them so as to highlight the beauty of the artwork.

Living Room

The living room is a multifunctional area. Depending on your lifestyle, you might be using it for parties, while others may just be using it for a place to relax. With such variation in purpose, it is important to choose lighting which is flexible.

Make sure that the lighting you want is aligned with the style of the furniture and the rest of the interior décor. Not all lamps and lights complement every type of furniture. So to set a theme and tone for your living room, make sure you choose fixtures that compliment the rest of the room.

We believe that chandeliers are a must – they make any large room look grand. When matched with the style of the remainder of the room, they prove to be the center of attention and give your room a royal feel. They lighten up the entire room and glisten onto your furniture, making everything seem inviting. If you are not fond of chandeliers, you may want to give larger pendant lamps a try.

Moreover, floor lamps and table lamps are the perfect tools via which you can change the mood of a room within a matter of seconds. Most floor lamps come with a dimmer switch, which allows you to modify the brightness of your living room to your needs.

Many living rooms are home to magnificent artwork, and it would be a shame if such pieces of art did not receive the attention they deserve. Sconces or accent lights help you do just that. Attaching them above a painting sheds light onto it, thereby highlighting it.

Furthermore, if your living room features ceiling fans, it is always a good idea to add spotlights so as to provide the chamber with additional mood lighting to be used when the need arises.

Overall, the lighting you choose for your living room should be flexible enough to keep up with the changing ambiance requirements.

Dining room

The dining room is considered to be one of the easiest rooms to choose fixtures for. It is because, unlike other rooms, dining rooms have a single universal focal point i.e. the dining table. The lighting you choose needs to enhance this piece of furniture.

Therefore, a likely lighting choice for a dining room is a low-hanging pendant or a modern chandelier above your dining table. Such decisions will be based on the type of material of the dining table. For instance, for a glass dining table, a pendant or crystal chandelier will be an ideal choice, while for an oak table, a wooden low-hanging pendant will look beautiful.

If you wish to highlight other pieces of decorations or furniture, you can add accent lights or table lamps to enhance them. Make sure you don’t overcrowd the room with too many fixtures since dining rooms should have a relaxed aura to them.

Kitchen

Unlike a dining room, a kitchen does not enjoy a single center point over which you can install your lighting on. Instead, every other feature requires attention and spotlight.

For instance, you need your lighting to help you perform each of your tasks flawlessly i.e. use the countertop, cook on the stove, wash in the sink, etc. You need lighting in all of these areas so as to ensure that the fundamental purpose of the kitchen is met. Under cabinet lighting is one of the biggest trends in recent years. You can use LED strips or LED puck lights to achieve a similar effect.

Therefore, you need to install various pendant lights over different parts in the kitchen. If you want, you can have a chandelier but they are becoming less and less popular for kitchens. Also, if you already have one in your living area and entryway, then we advise you not to opt for this decision.

Spotlights (recessed lights or track lights) may prove to be a good alternative to chandeliers and may also allow you to vary the lighting as per the requirement and time of the day.

Bedroom

A bedroom is a place where you rest and relax. Hence, it is a given that bedrooms should portray an aura of relaxation and peacefulness. You need to feel the events of your tiring day seep away as you enter the room. While the bed may seem like the sole savior after a hectic day, the lighting of the chamber is also critical.

Lamps are considered to be an essential part of the bedroom. However, if you want your room to stand out while being a peaceful place, you can opt for pendant lights instead of lamps.

You can also install task lightings. Such an addition allows you to set a tranquil mood. Scones can further enhance this ambiance. Use of accent lights to highlight your dressing table or photographs may also give the room a personalized and comfortable feel.

Make sure you install a dimmer switch in your bedroom. It will allow you change the setting of the light to dim to create a restful atmosphere or bright to liven up the room.

Bathroom

The fixtures in the bathroom should be such so as to ensure adequate lighting to perform various tasks. Therefore, task lighting on the mirrors is a must.

Make sure such components are accompanied with a dimmer switch so that you can adjust the lights in the morning. It is because when you wake up, all sorts of lighting seem to be too bright. A dimmer switch allows you to avoid feeling uncomfortable by decreasing the brightness of the light. Also, ensure that the lamps are placed on the face height so that they can be of maximum help to you.

Accent lighting is also a good way to light the whole room evenly – just make sure you get damp proof LED strips so they don’t burn out from the steam of the shower.

Mistakes To Avoid

Now that we have discussed how to choose proper lighting for your home, it is also important to know about the major pitfalls so that you can successfully avoid them.

Firstly, people tend to forget where shadows might fall when they install a light at a given place. Shadows, when formed in the wrong place, may render the underlying purpose of a light useless. For instance, if you install a light at the wrong location in a kitchen, a shadow might be cast on your workspace, making it inconvenient for you to get your work done.

Furthermore, people make the mistake of using the wrong size of the fixture. The size of your lamps and chandeliers too should complement the rest of the interior décor. For example, if you have a large dining table in your dining room but the chandelier you install above it is too small, it wouldn’t garner the same response and atmosphere as you wanted.

Lastly, you may not consider the color of the paint in a room. You can’t just achieve an open and lively look with the help of lights. It needs to be backed up with appropriate colors of the wall. Therefore, it is essential that the color of your walls and your lights work together to create an overall effect.

Light up your world

All in all, choosing the perfect lighting for your home is not an easy task. It requires a thorough understanding of the size, price, purpose and shape of the fixtures.

Nevertheless, once you succeed in making the right decision, your home will be an epitome of sophistication and royalty. It will have its own personality and mood. You will be able to impress your guests with the inviting ambiance of your entryway and living room.

Make wise decisions, and light up your homes. Make sure it has a soul of its own and help it stand out amongst the crowd. Personalize your home. Transform it into a sanctuary.