It is common for home owners to spend a lot of time, energy and money in personalizing their home to suit their preferred interior décor ideas with inspirational table lamps and lights and other furniture items and accessories. However, without the right lighting the results of these efforts mostly go unnoticed. Indoor lighting plays a huge role in achieving the intended look.
To ensure that the lighting you end up choosing helps achieve the intended look, while facilitating functional use of each different space, start by taking the time to familiarize yourself with basic indoor lighting tips.
Use the tips below as a simple guide on how to brighten up any room with the right lighting.
Layered Lighting
A room’s lighting is designed to achieve a number of different functions. Some lighting fixtures are designed to cater to the general lighting needs of a room, with ceiling lights being a great example here; while others are specifically designed to provide task lighting.
Layered lighting calls for the use of both ambient/general lighting in combination with task lighting for exceptional results. This ensures that the lighting in the room feels genuine, and suits the different lighting needs of the space.
Up-Lighting
One of the most common approaches in brightening up a dark room is to use white paint on the walls. The main goal is to use the white wall surfaces to bounce around the little light in the room in a bid to brighten things up. However, white walls are seemingly dull and lack the exciting feel that other colours can add to a room’s decor.
If you would like to light up a dark room without using white paint on the walls, consider using up-lighters. These fixtures use white ceilings (most rooms have white coloured ceilings) to reflect light downwards into the room and brighten things up.
Dimmer Switches
Dimmer switches are commonly used, as their name suggests, in dimming down lights in a room to achieve the intended mood. You can use these switches to vary the amount of light in a given room depending on the intended look and feel.
For instance dimmer switches can be used to dim the lights in a room to create a laid back feel. Alternatively, these switches can be used to brighten up a dark room in dull weather, when natural light is limited.
Faux Lighting
Artificial light fixtures can be used to complement, or in extreme cases as a substitute to, natural light in a dark room with great effect. These faux natural lights are designed to provide a similar effect to natural light. They can therefore be used in rooms and spaces where there’s little to no natural light.
When buying these lights, you should be guided by two main factors, the Colour Rendering Index (CRI) and colour temperature. As a rule of thumb, bulbs with a CRI rating of about 80 percent and 6,500K colour temperature will help you match the characteristics of natural light.
Keep the above tips in mind when it comes to lighting up a dark or dull indoor space.
