Lighting Tips and Tricks

by Brian Gottschall

Lighting is one area of home design that is all too often overlooked. There are many ways that lighting can enhance both the look and function of your home. The overall principle to remember is to use different types of lighting to add excitement and variety to your home.

Layering lighting within a room creates depth and drama. There are many options when it comes to lighting types, including chandeliers, table lamps, floor lamps, under cabinet lights, recessed or track lighting, uplights, and spotlights for artwork or other design elements.

Here are some lighting tips and tricks that you can use in various rooms of your home:

Kitchen Lighting

The kitchen is a place where good, functional lighting is a necessity. Under cabinet lights are a great option to provide good visibility for food preparation; poor lighting in this area can even increase the risk of injury while cutting food. Consider installing uplights above the cabinets to provide gentle illumination for the ceiling area – this is also a good way to highlight artwork or detail pieces like contrasting ceiling and wall paint colors, or crown molding. A good overhead chandelier or ceiling light fixture will provide for the room's general lighting needs. If you have a kitchen office or computer area, include a functional desk lamp.

Lighting for Living Areas and Bedrooms

Living rooms, family rooms, and bedrooms are generally some of the most lived in areas of a home, and they serve a variety of functions. This is why it's crucial to use a number of lighting types so that the right type of lighting is available for any circumstance.

Here are some general principles to remember when it comes to lighting living areas and bedrooms:

Task lighting: Task lighting can be as simple as a desk lamp or end table lamp. This type of lighting is most often used for reading, but is also helpful for other projects that require the ability to see detail. It is recommended that each seating position in a room have its own task lighting, but this isn't always possible. Place lamps on bedside tables and end tables; you can also place sofa table behind the couch and place a lamp there as well. Floor lamps are another option, and can work well behind chairs that are angled into a corner. Finally, recessed lighting can provide additional light where other options are unavailable.

Spotlighting: Use spotlights or picture lights that are designed especially to highlight framed artwork. Family portraits, contrasting wall colors, moldings, carvings, and other details can all be accented with this kind of lighting.

General lighting: In addition to task lighting and accent lighting, each room should have a good source of general light. This is most often in the form of a ceiling fixture or chandelier. If your home does not have a central ceiling fixture, you may want to install one, or you can opt for track lighting or torchiere lamps placed strategically in the room to provide maximum general light.

The basic principle of good lighting is to have the right type of lighting available for whatever activity is going on in the room. Layered lighting not only increases the functionality of your home; it also creates a multi-faceted look that adds depth and excitement to a room.

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Article Source: Lighting Tips and Tricks

Simple Solutions To Your Lighting Needs

by Rika

“From basic solutions of simply illuminating the place, lighting today has graduated to a mood-decider or an ambience creator, even an expression of class”, says Jack Robinson of GE Lighting. Millionaires have spent hordes of money decorating their mansions. Bill Gates is reputed to have spent $10 million on purely lighting fixtures for his $100 million mansion. Richard Branson spends average $6 to $8 million in each of his numerous manors. Even if your budget doesn’t quite fall in the same league, there’s a huge variety out there when it comes to acquiring the right lighting solution for your dear home.

The huge variety of choices available today is due to the increasing trend of people moving ahead and choosing the ambience of their own homes, rather than leave all the hard work to an outsider. Not only does it gives a great deal of satisfaction, the money saved can also be well utilized in actually buying some of those expensive fittings you have been craving.

A new house is the easiest to plan out, as planning for it is like painting on a blank canvass- the world is your oyster. Over-the-top lighting solutions can overshadow expensive furniture while the reverse holds equally true - tastefully done good lighting can well make even ordinary furniture look very classy. Again – money saved is money earned – so you would save a fair amount besides the glances of admiration and oodles of praise that your styles will draw.

Let us start with that most important of places – the dining room.

“You need good lighting in this portion of the house to first satisfy its basic function – see the food laid out on the dining room tables,” says Robert White, a New York based interior designer. Use halogen lights to highlight the tabletop, and improve the ambience of those dishes that have taken so much of time and effort in the kitchen. Try a pair of hanging lights rather than a single one so as to evenly distribute the light over the whole table.

For the overall lighting of the room and to bring out the best in the dining room furniture, use soft, non-glare wall lights in white or a color to compliment your walls and overall decor. A dining room hutch can be lit with small, concealed lights which, besides highlighting your expensive display items, would also add to the depth of the room.

Use soft lighting to reduce the look of a large sized room, especially if you have a high ceiling you want to camouflage. Bright lighting would similarly work opposite – make a smaller room look larger than it actually is.

Use lighting effectively to separate out the two portions in houses that have a common dining cum living room. Use different color lights in the dining and living areas to distinguish them. A dimmer works well to add an inexpensive option of varied lighting themes with the same lighting to suit your mood. They may not work with CFLs and florescent lighting, but adding a bulb here and there with a dimmer may not add prohibitively to your electricity bill, while it would definitely do wonders to the ambience. If you are a die-hard fluorescent fan, use mood lighting instead.

Do sign in next week to learn more about options to decorate other parts of the house in part two of this article.

The author is a home improvement expert. Your dining room furniture should reflect your personal style. Buy Amish handcrafted furniture for a lavish look. Amish made furniture is known to last for generations.

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