Are you making the most of your home, or are you living in the shadows? Here are some key pointers.
It’s easily done – just like a paint colour we don’t like, but can’t quite be bothered to change on our hall walls, bad lighting is a habit for many of us. Take a look around your home and you’ll probably find that it’s only the rooms that have been done up in the past three years that look good when the lights are on. The rest will be filled with patches of light supplied by a huge ceiling light in the middle of the room, and perhaps one side lamp that was actually bought to suit your needs in a previous home!
Here are a few tips to give your living room a welcome glow:
1. Don’t rely on main ceiling lights. When you are tidying up or reading, it’s good to have a strong source of light. Often, the light cast down from a main light will only create one large area of glare in the centre of the room, and by the time you are bent over a book, you’re in shadow! If you do like to use the main light, choose a few other smaller lights around the room too (see below), and choose a lampshade that will spread out the powerful light coming from the ceiling. Places like Habitat do some funky pendant shades that help diffuse the main light, and Homebase have some good multi-arm ceiling lights that are ornate enough for the lounge (rather than the brighter functional ones used in bathrooms and kitchens). These multi-strand models allow you to use just a 5 watt halogen bulb in each fixing, spreading the light around without losing the décor focus of the room’s main light.
2. Keep lounge lamps flexible. The living room is one of the busiest places in your home, used by all members of the family, and for a number of uses through each day. Choose lamps that are easy to move around when you need to rearrange furniture, rather than fixing wall lamps to a place above where the sofa might currently be (it might move in six months’ time). Near the television, go for a softer table lamp. If you want to get a standard lamp with a longish stand, so that it can be used either at a desk for work, or as a swing round to help you read at a chair, go for one that will fit easily into a corner, rather than one that stands out in the room where younger children will knock it easily.
3. Think about the look of your lamps. Do you want your lighting to be a focal point, or purely functional? There are so many different styles to choose from that you will have no trouble at all finding a table lamp or standard lamp shade to suit the colours and style of your lounge. But, realistically, you’re not going to change your lighting with each change in trend, so try to opt for something that’s more timeless and a good, flexible colour. If you like red, go with a rich, darker red, rather than something too bright. That way it will suit your lounge now, and go comfortably with other colours at a later date.