Improve Your Home Lighting With These Tips

Every interior designer will tell you that good lighting can make a difference in every room. It can make the rooms of your home appear more spacious, fresher by day and more cosy by night. Clever lighting will also make your house even more elegant and stylish, while saving your money in the winter months.

If it is time for you to embark on improving home lighting, whether it be for a specific room or the whole house, our bright ideas for improving your home lighting are sure to help:

If you haven’t done so already address any outdated fixtures and fittings like frosted or opaque glass, antiquated ceiling fixtures that provide little light and actually make the room drab and dingy. This will instantly modernise and update the room.

You lighting should be layered in each room using three sources of light. These are:

Ambient lighting
This gives all over light and would be your overhead lighting.

Task lighting
Light for a specific task such as grooming. In a bathroom led mirrors might be used.

Accent lighting
Light that is used to add mood to a room and create visual interest. Candles round a bath or light up a painting for example.

Dimmers are not only a great money saver, but offer flexibility for the multi-purpose rooms in your home. The lighting in the room can be adapted for the time of day, the event or simply the mood that is desired. Dimmers are fantastic for night-time when you are winding down to relax before sleep.

Dimmer switches are also relatively easy to install too.

CFL and LED bulbs are the best option for energy efficiency, but you will need to know your colours, they come in a variety of white – warm white, soft white and bright white.

If you are after a similar light to that of a traditional light bulb then opt for warm white or soft white. These give off a yellow hue similar to that of the old incandescent light bulbs.

For light that is closer to daylight opt for bulbs that are labelled as bright white. The light effect they give is also similar to that of a retail store.

A word of warning though. Read the labels carefully as not all LED bulbs are dimmable.

Adding reflective services to your home, such as mirrors, mirrored furniture, items with a metallic finish or glossy flooring will bounce around the natural light that enters the room, as well as the warm glow from any LED bulbs. For bathrooms LED mirrors are the perfect solution.

Hanging mirrors will not only make your room brighter but will also make it feel larger too.

The cheapest and most simple way to make the most of the natural light available to your room is to keep your windows clean.

If your windows are covered with heavy drapes, or bulky wooden blinds remove them in favour of materials that will let in the light even when drawn. Consider updating your wooden blinds to lighter fabric ones that don’t black out the light completely. These options will still provide you with privacy but will also let in the sunshine.

We hope that you have found this article useful. If you have recently been improving home lighting share you results and experiences with us the comments.