How To Choose The Right Lighting For Your Home
Lighting is one of the most important and influential aspects in your home. Yes, it has the obvious function of illuminating a room, but it helps to set the mood in your home – making it feel cozy and welcoming or lively and energetic.
Lighting allows you to enjoy your home to its full potential by giving the feeling of warmth and comfort. Each room of the home has different needs and different needs require different lighting options.
So, how do you go about choosing the right lighting for your home?
In this guide, we’re going to show you how you can decide what lighting would look best in each room of your home.
Entrance Hall
The entrance hall gives the first impression of a house. The first piece of indoor lighting that will be seen by you or your guests.
For this area of your home try to include some sort of transitional close-to-ceiling fixture. This type of fixture will illuminate your home and create a welcoming atmosphere.
Make sure you choose an appropriately sized light fixture for your space – if you live in a one-bedroom apartment, don’t buy a chandelier.
Stairways and Halls
Stairways must have appropriate lighting not only to add to the atmosphere of your home but also as a safety precaution.
To ensure that the stairs are safe have them lit from top to bottom with a switch available at either end of the staircase.
Hallway lighting fixtures should be installed at about 8 to 10 feet. To help bring your hallways together, try to match the hallway and stairway lights to the lights in your entrance hall.
Lighting Your Living Room
You can use lighting to highlight the best features of your living area. With carefully selected lighting, you can enhance the ambiance of the room and really bring out the personality in your living room.
General lighting provides general illumination and accent lighting, can provide a certain spark to your home environment and highlight any special pieces of decor you’d like to show off.
You can use recessed lighting to light a general area in your home. This type of light source is concealed and discreet.
Close-to-ceiling fixtures, like the ones we recommended for your entrance hall, wall sconces and interior lamps are also excellent choices for your living room as they provide bright, but understated, lighting.
These types of fixtures are not only lovely to look at but are also the ideal light source for tasks such as reading or playing games with the family.
Dining Room
With a dining room, it's important to create a focal point and when you have your table set and all your chairs pushed in, the centerpiece of this room will by your light fixture.
The lighting fixture you choose needs to express your personality and style but also satisfy the general lighting needs of the room. Choose a fixture that reflects you and your family and how you want your dining experience to be.
You can use a chandelier or a pendant for general lighting. Both of these fixtures provide a great source of lighting and are definitely going to give your dining room the wow factor.
Recessed wall washers can also provide some extra lighting to your dining room.
When adding accent lighting to the room, aim to include some adjustable halogen recessed fixtures on the table and the chandelier.
These will not only provide some additional light along the table but will help bring out the brilliance of your chandelier.
Kitchen
The heartbeat of your home! It’s the place where you prepare meals, entertain guests and help your kids with their homework. You need enough light to be able to read the newspaper and cook dinner, but you also want it to look inviting as well.
You can draw out a plan of your kitchen and see which areas have the most activity in them. Through this, you can decide what sort of light you’d like to have in each part.
Whether you want a general, task, accent, or decorative lighting fixture, drawing a plan of your kitchen before deciding on what you install will make your decision a whole lot easier.
Bathrooms
Probably one of the last places people think of planning in regard to lighting. It's often the case that people don’t want to spend money on lighting in the bathroom when they can decorate the rest of their house, but the bathroom is just as important as the dining room or kitchen.
Many a mirror has gone unlit and it’s often the case that a singular ceiling fixture is used to light up the sink, mirror, and the shower all at once!
Since you start and end your day in the bathroom, why not spend a little bit extra making it a more enjoyable space with carefully selected lighting.
Here are some tips to get your bathroom sparkling:
- Avoid leaving your face in the dark by not mounting lights directly over the mirror
- Add lights to the side of your mirror to eliminate shadows completely
- Add a close-to-ceiling fixture to complement wall bracket lights in larger bathrooms
- Use pieces of extra lighting in unexpected areas in the bathroom for both decoration and function
- Use some recessed lights in the shower and angle them to highlight tile work to make your shower really sparkle