Simple Tips for a Well-lit Room

Lighting is the slightly neglected step-child in the family of designing tools – between furnishings, color accents, flooring designs, ceiling elements, curtains and windows, and wall paint, it’s natural for most home-owners to not put so much stock in lighting to begin with.

But what most non-interior design enthusiasts don’t know is that lighting is the jewel on the crown of your home – it’s that final element that makes or breaks your aesthetic and functionality, and it works almost in the shadows with its subtle mood- and color-changing. How you see your home depends on the light in which you see it – and that makes having a well-lit room an absolute must.

Evaluate What You’ve Got so Far

Before you decide to radically change the way you’ve built your indoor lighting, it’s a good idea to take stock in what you have so far. Maybe instead of changing your lighting, you can change up the sheets on your bed or the pictures on your wall, or even just the curtains on the windows to achieve the difference you’re looking for.

Alternatively, it isn’t the design of your lamps and lighting that bothers you – it’s just the light itself. That’s easily rectified with today’s collection of various degrees of warmth and color – from daylight-appropriate lighting, to blue and white light for all-nighter working conditions, to the soft light you look forward to at the end of a long day hard at work.

Keep Color in Mind

Color psychology is real, and it affects lighting just as much as it affects flat colors themselves. As the Washington Post points out, a possible factor in teenage depression and insomnia is the blue light from the electronics we all love to carry into bed. However, blue light doesn’t just emanate from computer screens and smartphone displays – fluorescent bulbs and blue halogen lamps also block your melatonin production and cause sleeplessness.

It’s a logical, yet often missed factor in choosing the right lighting for absolutely any room in the house – first decide on the usage of the room, and then choose the appropriate lighting. Bright, cold and harsh lights for workspaces and home offices, and warm, cozy lights for bedrooms and the living room.

Don’t Forget Design

There are a million ways today to implement the lighting you want to implement. Wall sconces, ceiling lamps, ceiling fans with lighting, floor lamps, lights built into the flooring itself, lights built into staircases and under tables, nightstands, table lamps, office lamps – the list goes on and on, and only stops with the limit of any designer’s imagination.

Think thematically for the best aesthetic. Chandeliers have evolved in style over the past century, and there are hundreds of designs that might be your perfect ceiling lighting. Modern lighting may look sleek, monochrome, polished and physically unrealistic – floating plates of glowing glass, layered together like a bismuth crystal, or a wooden polygon with exposed light bulbs within, or modern Maxim Lighting implements from retailers like Lumens. Alternatively, you can go tribal with hand-carved wood and beautiful African calabash, or Arabesque with oval shapes and intricate geometry. Outdoor-indoor hybrid lighting in the style of red Chinese paper lamps can be romantic when nearby a little artificial pond, especially at night with the stars overhead.

If you don’t trust yourself with coming up with that perfect blend of design and color, don’t fuss – that’s what interior designers are there for.

Knowing the Difference Between Bulb Types

As the New York Times noted, old-school incandescent bulbs are finally being phased out by retailers around the world after nearly one and a half centuries of use. There are, however, far more efficient and versatile options out there today with a great emphasis on energy-efficiency, and environmental health. The most common types are: LED, fluorescent, and halogen lamps (a type of incandescent).

LED stands for light-emitting diode, and these lamps are often composed of several smaller diodes that light up when an electric current passes through them. As the Huffington Post notes, LEDs are the most energy-efficient option on the market – but they’re also the most costly.

Fluorescent lamps use lit gas to produce light – but that can sometimes lead to a slight shade of green hue in your light’s color. They also don’t dim like LEDs or incandescent lamps do, although they are cheaper than both.

Modern-day incandescent bulbs differ from older incandescent bulbs in that they now have a very strict energy standard to follow. If they don’t emit the right amount of lumens – a measurement of light – they’re not government-approved. Halogen lamps are a newer, yet more expensive type of incandescent that use a brass base and tungsten filament to reach incredibly high temperatures and thus produce the brightest light – halogen lamps are said to produce the “truest” colors due to their brightness.

Whatever you decide to choose, the final tip to consider when designing your home’s lighting is daylighting – that is, making sure your room gets as much natural light through your windows as possible, thus eliminating the need for artificial lighting during the day.