What Type Of Lighting To Use In Your Interior
I have already mentioned how important lighting is when it comes to our interior. But how do we know how to get the right lighting scheme for our home?
Well, my first advice is to start by appraising the existing lighting in each room of your house. So check the amount of natural light that comes in and the orientation of the room. Try and maximise daylight within your house. Brighter homes have proven health benefits and often sell for more money too. But when the sun sets or the grey winter days come in, it is also really important to have good artificial lighting in place. Consider how much of artificial light it will take to supplement the natural light. Think also that good lighting in your home can transform a space, dictate your mood and help with how the home functions.
What are the first steps?
Once you have analyzed the natural light start writing down some questions like what don’t you like about it? Is this enough for the space? is the colour temperature right for the task that you are doing in that room? If you are thinking to move things around inside a room, bear this in mind for you lighting so analyze where the outlets are.
When to start thinking about lighting
If you are renovating your home start integrating lighting from the very beginning into the architecture. Try to use accent lighting that can highlight architectural elements.
Consider lighting early in the design stage and not leave it too late, so that you can create different layers of tasks, ambient and architectural lighting. Start with the task lighting that you need to make the space function properly, then think about the mood you want to create in the room. this is called the ambient lighting; Finally consider architectural elements that would benefit to bring out features such as texture, height or a recess.
What type of lighting to choose
In terms of what type of lighting to choose LED are nowadays the best options for their lifetime, efficiency and shapes to create different lighting compositions. You can choose from very warm white, warm white, daylight and cool white, each creating a different look and feel. – Strip lighting: If you want to highlit a feature in your room or add accent lighting, strip lights are perfect for you. You can control colour and shade, even set to music tracks, transforming a room look, feel and mood.
Some points the professionals consider when designing a lighting scheme:
- Warm of light – the colour temperature, which is measured in Kelvins, the lower the figure, the more ‘warm coloured’ the lamp.
- The angle of the beam – this impact on the amount of floor area covered. It’s more efficient to have less light with wider beam angles.
- Light sockets – carefully plan them from the beginning as is not easy to add in once the decoration is complete. Most of the time, we need a lot more sockets in a room that we have. You might also want to consider sockets on the floor for reading lamps, where you do not want to show a long wire next to the sofa that can be dangerous too.
- Circuits – the more circuits you can have in a room the more you can vary the effect of different light source and create different layers. Anyway, bear in mind that after 3 circuits would be better to use a proper control system rather than simple switches.
Is true that creating a nice lighting system can be costly but the fact is that a fairly modest room will look fabulous when lit properly, whereas a beautiful decorate one will look flat and not interesting if lit badly.
My final advice is not to get cheap lighting, as these can cause the wrong effect and break sooner than expected.
Moretti Interior Design can help you to create beautiful spaces. For more information or to book a consultation in our West London studio, contact us today.
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