Lighting is one of the most important features in our home. You can easily change the vibe of a room just by adjusting the lighting, so it’s crucial to know how to use lighting to create the interior of your dreams. To help you get the most out of your home lighting, and ensure simple mistakes aren’t making your home unpleasant to hang out in, here are a few of the most common home lighting mistakes people make, and how to fix them.
1. Limiting yourself to one lighting source
Many of us only use one lighting source for our home, and don’t realize that mixing different types will actually provide us with the best lighting. We often only use overhead lamps, which do provide ambient light, but are hardly enough to properly illuminate a room.
To mix things up, you can install task lighting and accent lights alongside your usual overhead lights. Task lighting is perfect for activities such as reading or cooking, and will ensure you have enough light to actually see what you are doing. Accent lights help to highlight certain parts of a room, such as artwork or that open brick wall in your living room, which will brighten things up and make the room more aesthetically appealing.
2. Not using light dimmer switches
Another common home lighting mistake is forgetting to use dimmer switches to control your lights. By themselves, lamps usually only allow two light conditions: on and off. This doesn’t give you many options when it comes to adjusting your lights, which is where dimmer switches come in.
Dimmers allow you to adjust the brightness of your lights to your liking and create just the right mood for any room. Dimmers can also decrease the voltage of your lamps, which will help you save electricity and have more efficient lighting in the long run. Try installing dimmers, at least to your ambient lights, and see how they change your home lighting game.
3. Choosing the wrong color temperature bulbs
Most of us ignore the color temperature measurements that are written on light bulb packaging. As a result, we may end up purchasing the wrong hue lights, and set the wrong mood in our rooms. All light bulbs, be it solar flood lights, fluorescent fixtures or efficient LED lights come in many different hues. These tonal differences in the illumination of the bulbs are called the color temperature of the lights, and are measured in Kelvins.
The two most popular hues for household lighting are warm white and cool white. Bulbs that are labeled warm white emit light that is yellow-toned, and create a more warm and cozy atmosphere. Their color temperature usually ranges from 2,700 to 3,000 Kelvins. Cool white bulbs, on the other hand, emit light with a blue undertone, and create a brighter, more office-like setting. Their color temperature is generally between 5,000 and 6,500 Kelvins. Once you decide what kind of mood you want to set in your home you can tailor your light bulbs and truly get the most out of your lighting.
4. Forgetting to account for possible shadows
Lastly, we can’t forget about shadows and where they will fall in the room when we turn on the lights. Having lots of shadow in your home will not only be annoying and avert all the effort you put into decorating, but can also interfere with your day-to-day if it falls in areas where you are often reading, cooking or working.
To prevent this, test your lights out at night before you permanently install them to ensure there aren’t any objects near the light source that might cast unpleasant shadows. It’s also important to consider how you will be using the room. Think about where you’ll be spending most of your time and where it’s important to have the most light. That way, you can plan accordingly and make sure you won’t have any unwanted shadows in your home.
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This post was written by Arcadia customer Arthur Smith. Arthur has been working in the solar and lighting industries for quite some time, and now shares his experience in these fields with others through articles on LEDwatcher.com, an independent blog on renewable energy, solar panels, LED lights, the newest lighting technologies, and so much more.
