Best Lighting Tips to Follow, According to Pros

Key Takeaways

• Ambient lighting refers to the overall illumination of a room, task lighting is for brightening specific areas of a room, and accent lighting refers to highlighting the architectural features or art of a room
• Layering the different types of lighting is best to create a more balanced look
• Living rooms need mood lighting and multi-functional layers
• Kitchens need task and ambient lighting for work areas
• Bedrooms need soft ambient light and bedside task lighting
• Avoid the overuse of overhead lighting
• Ensure fixtures are sized correctly for the room
• Dimmers allow for more flexibility in your light sources
• Colour temperature matters, use warm white for a cozy feel and cool white for a lively atmosphere
• LED bulbs are more energy efficient than other options
• Fixtures should be placed strategically to avoid shadows and glare
• Match chandeliers to ceiling heights for a proportional design

Having proper lighting is incredibly important for your home design as it sets the tone of the various rooms in your house and affects both the visual appeal and usefulness of each room. Throughout this blog, we will discuss tips for the best interior design lighting, including outlining the different types of lighting, what works best for different rooms, common mistakes to avoid, and technical considerations, all of which should be taken into account when determining the right lighting designs for you and your home.

Understanding Layered Lighting

It is crucial to understand the different types of lighting you can have in a room and how to layer them for the best results. Follow the lighting guide below to help you determine the proper use of a variety of light sources:

• Ambient lighting — Ambient lighting provides the general illumination of a room, creating the overall lighting level and brightness, and is used to set the tone. Sources to create this include fixed wall lights, spotlights, chandeliers or other overhead lighting fixtures, and recessed ceiling lighting, as well as natural light, which will evenly brighten the space.

• Task lighting — Task lighting is used for specific areas of a room, typically in corners or beside chairs and couches, acting as part of the decor while still providing light for peripheral places that are often the darkest. As the name suggests, task lighting is particularly suited for areas where you do the most work or activities. The fixtures that tend to be the best for this are lamps such as table, floor, and swing-arm.
• Accent lighting — Also known as mood lighting, this is used to highlight the architectural features of a room or appealing objects like artwork and other ornamental furnishings. It is great for drawing the eye’s attention to the most beautiful parts of a room and to help make a statement. Accent lighting can be found in shelf or niche lights and picture lights, as well as decorative lights on bare walls.

All rooms should have at least two sources of light to ensure that the space is well-lit and comfortable. Layering the three types of lights outlined will allow for a more balanced looking room, with overall illumination from your ambient lighting to targeted light from your task lighting, and added visual interest from your accent lighting. Combining artificial light sources with natural light will effectively brighten a room, making it more dynamic. It is also a good idea to place these types of light at different heights around a space, high, middle and low, to create an increasingly dynamic and well-lit room.
 

Room-Specific Lighting Tips

Different rooms in your house will require different combinations of light sources to better fit the activities done in each room and the mood you want to set. Here, we will outline our lighting tips for what are arguably the most important rooms in any home:

Because the living room is where your family will spend most of your time together and where you will engage in a variety of activities, mood-setting and multi-functional layers for the lighting of the room is the way to go. Choosing ambient lighting that bounces off the ceiling is great because it brightens the room without the downward direction of recessed lights which causes shadows. To achieve this, integrate cove or valance lighting into the architecture of the room by adding light sources behind your television or behind the bookshelves that don’t go all the way up to the ceiling. Another option for ambient lighting is to wash the walls with light, done through soffit or valance lighting, or recessed or track lighting specifically directed towards the walls. Task lighting can be found through reading lamps near a table, chair or couch and accent lighting can be track lighting focused on any artwork in the room or a fireplace if you have one.

In terms of kitchen lighting strategies, task and ambient light for work areas are a must. Since the sink and counters are where most of the work in your kitchen gets done, task lighting is particularly valuable in those areas. Traditional kitchen layouts include the sink being located at a window so as to take advantage of the natural light that will come through. A ceiling mounted or recessed feature over the sink can increase the amount of light provided by the window and be a great help at night when natural light is not available. Under-cabinet lighting to illuminate the counters are also highly recommended. For additional task lighting, try including lights in your cabinets as well to illuminate any tableware or ingredients, primarily those items in the back of the cabinets that can get lost in the dark. Of course, you can’t forget about the ambient lighting, which could be a central ceiling mounted fixture or cove lighting along two of the kitchen walls that are opposite one another.

When it comes to your bedroom, soft ambient light and bedside task lighting are ideal. If you read in bed, wall mounted light fixtures with adjustable arms within easy reach are recommended so that you can direct the light to where you need it. Soft ambient lighting means avoiding ceiling mounted fixtures as they can be harsh when looked at from your bed and disrupt what should be a relaxing atmosphere. Instead, go for floor lamps, a pair of sconces on either side of your dresser or mirror, and architectural lighting to create a cozy feel, especially for the evening when you are unwinding from the day.

Overall, you should do your best to customize the lighting for different room activities, whether reading, working, or entertaining. This way, you know that your lighting will be made to suit your lifestyle and you can have an even more comfortable living space. Everyone has different needs, so you should consider exactly what your needs are and design your home accordingly.
 

Avoiding Common Lighting Layout Mistakes

To understand how to best light a room, you need to be aware of these common lighting layout mistakes in order to avoid them.

In regard to overhead lighting, though it is good to have in most rooms as your source of ambient lighting, you need to be careful that you do not overuse it. Overusing overhead lighting, or more accurately overly relying on it, is a common mistake that many people fall prey to, having it as their sole lighting source in any given room. Overhead fixtures should never be your only source of lighting in a room. This is because it will not properly illuminate the entire space and can actually ruin the room’s look and feel. To bring the right mood to a space, you can still use ceiling lights, but they should be layered with task and accent lighting, like table lamps and picture lights, for a more cohesive, well-rounded, and comfortable atmosphere.

Another common mistake is having incorrectly sized fixtures. All light fixtures should be the right size for the space they are in because if they are not the correct size, the room as a whole looks off. Take sconces in the bathroom, for example. They need to be proportional to the mirror and vanity. If the sconces are too big or too small, the lighting of the room will be wrong, causing unwanted glare or shadows, and the room itself will seem badly designed.

A mistake that often gets overlooked in lighting design is the use of normal on/off switches instead of dimmers. Foregoing normal switches for dimmer switches allows for more flexibility in your lighting choices. By using a dimmer, you can change the lighting in a room based on the mood you want or the activity that you are doing, whether you need more or less light throughout the day. In this way, you can adapt to your own needs and those of your family rather than being stuck with only one level of brightness for the various rooms in your home.
 

Technical Considerations for Lighting Design

The type of bulbs you choose are an essential aspect of the lights for your rooms. There are so many light bulb options nowadays that it can often be challenging to pick one and know if it is right for your space or not. Depending on what you use a room for, different colour temperatures will work better than others. If you are going for a cozy atmosphere, choose warm white bulbs (2700 kelvins), whereas cool white bulbs (4000 kelvins) are ideal for a more energetic feel. Kelvins refer to how blue a light is, so the higher the kelvin, the more blue the light. For the actual brightness that the light will be, check the number of lumens, as the higher the lumen amount, the brighter the light. To be more energy efficient and subsequently save on energy costs, make sure to use LED bulbs instead of incandescent bulbs. LED bulbs also have the added bonus of having a longer lifespan than other options.

When placing fixtures, it is important to do so strategically in order to avoid shadows and glare. The placement of a table lamp next to a couch, for instance, can affect the shadows on people’s faces when they sit down, so fixtures should be placed carefully at the correct height to lessen the shadows that could appear. Always factor in the height and overall size of the fixtures themselves when determining where to place them, so that you can put them in the position for the ideal lighting. As for circumventing any glares from appearing on surfaces like the TV, floor lamps or other lighting fixtures should not be placed beside such objects.

One last consideration is to ensure that the room’s design is proportional. One way to do this is by having overhead fixtures like chandeliers match the ceiling height of your room. Higher ceilings will require larger fixtures, while lower ceilings will require smaller fixtures. This will help create balance in the room, maintaining the aesthetic appeal of the space. If a smaller fixture is placed in a room with a tall ceiling then it will not properly illuminate the whole space and will frankly just look wrong, same as if a larger fixture is placed in a room with a low ceiling which will then overwhelm the space.

Plan Your Lighting Layout with Professionals

In this blog, we have discussed the different types of lighting and why it is important to layer them, what works best for different rooms in your home, common lighting mistakes that people make, and the technical factors to consider for your interior lighting design. We hope that this has given you the information needed to properly light your home in a way that works best for you and your lifestyle. Remember to experiment with your lighting options, especially with the different ways you can layer them, to create the best-looking rooms in your house.

At Siga Home Comfort, we are always here to help find the perfect lighting fixtures for you. If you are seeking professional lighting advice or you’re ready to start redesigning your space, come on down to our showroom to look at the lighting options we offer. Contact us today to book an appointment with our lighting experts!