Lighting plays a very important role in enhancing the aesthetics and functionality of your homes and businesses. It also effects your emotions, mood, and wellbeing in a great way. There are a lot of researches in regards to effects of light making you happier and productive. By utilizing interior lighting designs and tweaking slightly your light scheme, you can provide a completely new look to your home.
For selecting light fixtures, follow two thumb rules. First, always consider mix of light sources at different levels for creating flattering ambience and second assign appropriate task lighting (reading, dressing, etc.). Thus, whether you are redesigning your indoor lighting or putting new fixtures, make sure you know exactly what you want to create including electrical safety.
Discussed below are 3 important factors utilizing which you can designate appropriate light fixture:
- Lighting design factors: Different rooms in your home requires different type of lighting scheme and one must consider various lighting factors before implementing lighting scheme like the size and space of the room, ceiling height and shape, color scheme of walls and furniture, existing lights and electrical setups, traffic patterns, shadows and reflections, daylight integration, surface characteristics, color appearance, lighting control and its distribution, economics and energy efficiency, spatial perceptions, level of illumination, and source, task, and its geometry, etc. Color in your room contributes greatly to your psychological state along with color temperature of your lighting, making your either feeling sluggish and depressed or lively and optimistic. Hence, always consult a professional to get from your space exactly what you want.
- Lighting design layers: Whenever we discuss about lighting design layer, we generally think in terms of three main categories:
- General lighting: It is used to make an interior space visible.
- Task Lighting: It is focused toward a specific area to give more detail to objects and provide safe passage. Cooking, drawing, writing, sewing are some categories of close-range work which requires task lighting, which provides enough light to see flaws in your work.
- Accent Lighting: As the word suggest, it is responsible to create visual interest to an object or area. It is the extra special light,which add drama and changes the mood of your room.
- Lighting fixtures: These makes your design sort of easier one and consists of:
- Surface Lights: These are surface-mounted fixtures which are most commonly used in entryways, hallways, and bedrooms.
- Pendant Lights: These fixtures hangs down from ceiling by a cable, cord, or chain, and are usually found in dining room, kitchens, etc.
- Recessed Lights: These lights are hidden away usually in ceiling cavity so that you cannot see the light source and provides indirect lighting and can be used effectively in any room of the home.
- Track Lights: These lighting consist of multiple bulbs on one track with multiple circuits and voltages and can be suspended from ceiling like pendant light or surface-mounted like surface light. It comes in variety of colors, styles, and finish and provides you a lot of flexible lighting option.
- Portable Lights: These lights are typically used for desks and bedside table and come in variety of fixtures, color temperatures, and styles and are very much popular.
- Landscape Lighting: It consists of bullet lights, flood lights, motion sensors, deck lighting, security lighting, and wash lighting and generally meant for outdoors lighting installation.
Lighting enhances overall look of your home tremendously, but it requires a lot of home work like what kind of lighting each room need, what are the overhead options, what wattage is best, their size, and placement, which LED ceiling lighting to use, and where should I shop for lamps and fixtures. Hence, it is always advisable to do your homework thoroughly or hire a professional to get dream look of your house.