Lighting In The Home

Lighting is a term that generally refers to artificial light. Good lighting helps the eyes work better. Reading or working in poor light may cause fatigue or eyestrain and lead to dizziness, headaches, or sleepiness.

In the home, electric lamps and fixtures provide light and safety for people walking from room to room or up and down stairs. Every room and passageway needs at least some general lighting so that things can be seen clearly enough to avoid accidents.

Bathrooms have special lights that people use when putting on makeup or shaving. Bedrooms and living rooms have additional lighting for such activities as reading, studying and sewing.

Lighting can be used to create various moods and to bring out the colors of walls and fabrics in a home.

Incandescent lamps and warm white flourescent lamps emphasize reds, yellows and oranges. Cool white flourescent lamps bring out blues and greens.

Spotlights can be arranged to draw attention to pictures, plants or other decorative objects.

When planning for your interior design projects you will have to consider the different categories of lighting fixtures. Lights are categorized according to how they will be placed in the room.

There are:-
Ceiling
Wall
Floor
Table
Indirect Lighting Fixtures and
candle lighting

First consider what tasks will need to be performed in the room; cooking, reading, writing etc. These are the areas of the room that you light first.

All the categories can be used in a living room, for example, for variety. For reading and or writing you could place lamps on a desk, side tables or night stands, or use floor lamps; next to a chair, sofa or bed. You could also put up wall sconces, on either side of a fireplace. A ceiling fixture could be used over a cocktail table, while two table lamps could be put on side tables flanking a sofa or a table between two chairs or beside one chair. Or two floor lamps could either flank the sofa or chair. Wall sconces can be place on either side of a fireplace or armoire, bookcase etc. You can also include indirect lighting around plants, pictures and window treatments, etc. This will add light to any remaining dark area.

There should be variety in the types of fixtures, direction that the light flows in, the height of the lamps and the intensity of the lighting. Lighting flows down with ceiling fixtures and baton lamps, and flows multi-directional with wall scones and table lamps. Ceiling lights are the highest, wall scones are lower and floor and table lamps are at a medium height. Floor lamps and table lamps are less intense than ceiling lights.

In your planning pay attention to where the existing electrical outlets and connections are located.