Home Lighting Ideas – the Do’s and Don’ts Lighting Deco Advises by Ambrolights

Putting the Right Lightings into Your Home will Gives a Magic Touch for Great Impression

Lighting is one of the easiest ways of transforming the look of a home. It sets a mood, giving the home a character that distinguishes the desired theme. You can also use proper lighting to highlight a room’s special asset while keeping flaws well hidden.

You need to be able to distinguish the difference between good lighting and bright lighting. Good lighting gives proper illumination at different levels while bright lighting is a combination of lights and shadows that shape a room.

Home owners may have committed some of the most graving blunders in interior design. The rule of thumb is to adhere to the ‘less is more’ rule. The more lighting installed at home, the more clustered it will look. With lesser lighting, your home will look neater and exude simplicity. One should not assume that the home will look dimmer with lesser lighting. Using the ideal light bulb with the right amount of voltage will help create the perfect effect and save on electricity too.

Whilst brightening up your home might seem complicated, there are a few rules to live by;

Function

Ambrolights suggests home owners when deciding on the kind of lighting to use, think about how you are planning to utilise the room. Will the room be used for reading? Just place lamps at each reading spot.

Is the room used for watching TV or lounging? If yes, use overall illumination that can be fine-tuned to different settings so that it will not reflect on the TV screen, causing a glare. Will the room be used to relax and unwind? No problem, turn down the wattage as that will turn up the atmosphere. If the room is used for office related tasks or to accommodate the elderly, make sure the lighting is bright and uniform.

Décor

Pay close attention to the style of the room. For homes with contemporary décor, use fewer lamps and more built-in lighting. For home styles leaning toward a more traditional concept, you can go for lamps or any other designer lighting that enhances the look that you are trying to accomplish.

Type of Lighting

Ambient lighting works best for overall illumination. Ambient light can be formed through ceiling fixtures, recessed cans, torchieres or sconces. If this is what you would prefer, make sure that it illuminates the room evenly. It could be tricky and hard to decide where to place the lights and which lights are best to use, most of the time we would recommend you to get advice from lighting expert like Ambrolights.

"Accent lighting, which is like the frosting on the cake because it adds a nice finishing touch, focuses on specific features in a room that you want to highlight.”

Task lighting illuminates areas that host leisure activities such as reading or cooking, where light shines from a lamp or a hanging fixture. It should be placed in front of the person performing the task so that it can prevent the body from casting a shadow over the work surface.

Accent lighting, which is like the frosting on the cake because it adds a nice finishing touch, focuses on specific features in a room that you want to highlight. It could be an architectural element or an artwork and is usually produced by track lights or a spotlight.

Dimness

Every home should have at least two lighting levels - a bright one for tasks, and a dimmer one for when you enter a ‘relaxed’ mode. You can create any selection you want by adjusting the settings of the lights, or with dimmers.

Space

Methods to define areas within a room come in different forms, including physically dividing a particular area with furniture, colours, or room dividers.

Define areas within a room by using different styles of lighting to bring out the characteristic of the said areas.

One of the most practical (yet often overlooked) ways to define a room is through lighting – from the fixtures that you choose to how you position them. The most obvious way to define rooms with lighting is with the use of ceiling lights. For example, installing a hanging fixture over a dining table or placing it in the middle of the living room area instantly shouts that something exciting is happening there.

If the room has more than one area to define with just one ceiling point, you will be surprised with what a tall floor lamp can do. Big and tall lamps can do the exact same thing as a ceiling light, defining the area from above.

Colours

Lighting affects how colours appear in a room as different bulbs come with different hues. Halogen and incandescent bulbs produce a yellow light that make colours appear warmer. This is perfect for rooms that use yellow based neutrals with urban vibes created by greys with blue undertones. LED lighting releases a bluer light and is more suitable for modern interiors.

If you prefer the colour of your room to appear as close as possible to natural light, best to choose a bulb that emits white light so that you can see the most accurate impression of the colour. Here is a tip – Once you have chosen a colour but not sure if it will live up to your expectation, create a sample by painting over an A4 paper or card to see how the colour works. Move it around the room and look at it during different times of the day so you can see how the colour is affected by the light.

Furniture Arrangement

Both natural and man-made lighting does a lot to create an illusion. Darker rooms tend to feel more cramped and it is worst when all the furniture are arranged at a close proximity. For it to appear brighter, get creative to bring in more full-spectrum natural light.

If there is no natural lighting, there are lights that can make your room look spacious - corner lamps, wall sconces and centrally hanging lights. This applies to any setting, be it home or office.

Natural lighting is much preferred over man-made lighting because colours are portrayed better and it adds “space” by bouncing off reflective surfaces. For more natural light to shine in, you may consider getting larger windows or use sheer drapes to allow maximum amount of light to enter. If large windows are not an option for you, play around with other lightings to get the effect that you really want for your home. 

For most cases, if you are not sure on how to match these aspects nicely to design and build your dream home, the best is to seek for experienced lighting consultant to avoid wasting your investment on the wrong lightings.

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