Ways to Light Up Your Home

Ways to Light Up Your Home

We've all been in rooms that just feel good. They have a palpable, comfortable atmosphere that makes you want to put up your feet and stay a while. Beyond the practicality of light, which is that we need it to see, the lighting scheme in your home has a big influence on the personality of a room. You wouldn't want a bright overhead light shining down on an intimate dinner party or a single lamp lighting a space where you're trying to do a project. The main goal of lighting design is to introduce varying degrees of light into a room, which are called layers. If you only have direct light sources, it will make a space feel dark and gloomy. And if you light the room evenly with no contrast, the room will appear flat and uninviting. Lighting is all about creating interest and visual drama, and these layers of light are parts of the whole that create the ultimate ambiance. Read on to be illuminated about lighting up your home.

Ambient Lighting

The purpose of ambient light is to create a diffused, even light level in a room, and it's the first place to start when creating a lighting scheme. Ambient light can also refer to a lighting scheme as a whole, but for our purposes, we'll be talking about ambient light sources. The source usually comes from lights on the ceiling, though sometimes table or floor lamps can do the trick. Overhead light sources can be a lone bright light, such as a ceiling or pendant light, or multiple lights, such as track lighting or recessed cans. These smaller lights all work together to create the main light source, but the difference is that they can be aimed at different areas of the room to get into all of the nooks and crannies.

Most overhead lights use incandescent bulbs, which are inexpensive and come in a variety of wattages. Compact fluorescent bulbs also have come on the scene as "green" alternatives that cost a little more but last considerably longer than their incandescent counterparts. They also...