Appropriate lighting in a home is very important for both functionality and aesthetics. Unfortunately, trying to get the lighting right in your house can be a very complicated task, because the light can turn out to be too bright, too dark or in wrong color temperature. Also the light fixtures themselves can look inappropriate or odd in your space. So to make it a little easier for you to choose the lighting for your home, here are some of the most popular lighting mistakes that you should never make.
Installing only overhead (ambient) lighting
Most people choose to install only ambient lighting in their homes, but interior designers recommend using three different types of lighting – ambient, accent and task lighting. Ambient lighting is the one that gives overall light to the room, and it is usually achieved by placing one or multiple overhead light fixtures all over the room. Accent lighting is used to emphasize some specific characteristics of a house for example, shelves, paintings or other wall decor. But task lighting is lights that are used to perform specific tasks, for example, it can be a desk lamp for doing paperwork or a nightlight next to your bed for reading. And combining these three types of lights will ensure sufficient lighting for everything and anything.
Choosing the wrong light for the coloring of your rooms
What many people don’t know is that you should match your light to the colors in your interior, because colors of your walls and other design elements can severely change how you perceive the color of your lighting.
Black color absorbs light, but white reflects it light, blue color absorbs the red tones, but red – the blues. And that means that white-yellow light, which will have the color temperature of around 3,000 Kelvins, will make red, orange, and yellow tones more vivid in your interior, while blue-white colored light (with the color temperature around 6,500 Kelvins) will enhance the blues and the greens, but will mute warmer tones. So, depending on what mood you want to create in your space, you should choose the appropriate color of your light sources.
Using wrong color temperature lights
The color temperature of a light source also often is chosen wrongly. Beside the lamp itself, there are many factors that can determine the appropriate light color temperature for each room, for example, the dimensions of the space, the owner’s preferences and the feel that the owner is going for in their home. On top of that, each room also has different lighting needs and expectations, and you should consider all of this before you pick up your light bulbs.
How to figure out what type of color temperature lights will work best for you? Well the easiest way to do this is to figure out if you want your room to feel bright and awake, or you want a more cozy vibe in your space. If the former is true, then buy blue-white bulbs, but if you like your house warm and homey, then chose warm-white bulbs, that will help you achieve that.
Installing the wrong size light fixtures
It is very important to choose appropriate size light fixtures to keep the balance in your space. Light fixtures that are too small for your space, like recessed lights or small accent lights can create a very cheap look, to your room, if they aren’t used correctly. At the same time, lamps that are too big, like solar outdoor lights or big chandeliers can make your room look disproportional.
The best method how to choose appropriate size light fixtures, so they look good in your space as well as provide enough illumination, is by creating a simple cardboard light model and hanging it up, because this way you will be able to see if it fits in the rooms interior or not.
Not thinking about wattage of your lights
Lastly, most people simply doesn’t consider how much watts their lighting uses to light each room and end up with huge electricity bills. So to solve this, you should first figure out what is the optimal brightness of light in each room in your home, and then buy your light bulbs according to these requirements. For example, you don’t usually need that bright of a light in your bedroom, so 800 lumen bulbs will provide enough illumination. But for your living room you should go for around 1,600 lumen output lights, because they will ensure that you have sufficient lighting to perform different everyday tasks.
But where does wattage comes in? Well, wattage is the thing you need to consider once you know what brightness bulbs you need. And it will come into play when you will be choosing between incandescent, fluorescent or LED bulbs, because each of these bulbs consumes different amount of watts while producing the same amount of light. For example, both a 100-watt incandescent and 16-watt LED bulbs will produce enough light to illuminate your living room. So you chose which type of light you want to buy.
Proper lighting in your home means that not only it will be lot easier to do different tasks because you will have sufficient lighting, but also that your home will have the right atmosphere. So no matter if you are designing a brand new lighting setup or just want to tweak your existing lighting situation, take some time to read these home lighting mistakes and to think about how to make sure that you are not making them in your house.
Authors bio: Arthur Smith is a blogger, efficient lighting enthusiast and solar power aficionado. He has been working in the lighting and solar industries for most of his life, and now shares his knowledge on these topics in his blog LEDwatcher.com.
