Your home’s lighting is serious business. The type of lighting you select can affect your mood, impact your home’s resale value, and alter the functionality of your property. The following eight suggestions can help you take your current lighting plan and make it terrific!
1. Use Task Lights
Task lights are important in rooms like the kitchen, study, library, and workshop. Usually found on the underside of cabinets, most task lights are bright and somewhat lacking in aesthetic beauty. What they lack in visual appeal, they make up for in usefulness. Task lights make it easier to complete the work that needs to be done in a localized area, making your home’s workspaces more functional and pleasant.
2. Take Advantage of Natural Light
Here in Southern California, daylight is our most abundant natural resource. Natural light inside your home can lower your DWP bill and make your room interiors more attractive. To maximize the daylight that enters your home, follow these tips:
- Remove room darkening drapes or curtains.
- Put up sheer or very light-colored cotton curtains.
- Remove outdoor obstructions (like bushes) that prevent natural light from reaching the window.
3. Consider the Room’s Purpose
Before you can light a room appropriately, you must first consider how the room will be used. Where will you sit? What will you do in that room? The purpose of each room should affect the type of lighting you choose. Living rooms, for example, are commonly used as seating areas for large family groups as well as individuals. Combining bright overhead lights and small lamps will ensure that your living room has adequate lighting options for both purposes.
4. Know the Options
Lights come in different sizes and shapes. Some of the most common options include:
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Recessed lights.
Recessed lights have a modern, sleek quality, making them very popular in modern construction. They’re most commonly found in hallways, kitchens, bathrooms, living rooms, and other public areas.
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Lamps
Lamps are homier and cozier than recessed lights, which makes them perfect for bedrooms and nurseries. If you’re planning to light by lamps, have an electrician hook up the outlets in your home to the light switches. This way, you can turn on the lights when you walk in the door.
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Flush lights
A flush ceiling light will sit flat against the ceiling of the room. This option is common in living rooms and bedrooms where a bright light is sometimes necessary for certain activities.
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Pendant lights
Common in dining areas and kitchens, pendant lights hang from the ceiling and shine a directed, focused beam on the surface below.
Familiarizing yourself with these options can help you decide which lighting options are best for your home.
5. Provide a Mixture of Light Sources
Once you know all the kinds of light sources that can be used in your home, it’s best to pick a mixture of different types of lighting for each room. Using a combination of lamps, flush lights, and recessed lights in each room will give you all the options you need to keep your home well-lit.
6. Choose Wattage Carefully
A light bulb's wattage can affect how you experience a room. Dim wattages can make a room seem small and intimate, while bright light bulbs make a space easier to use. Choosing the right type of wattage is also a matter of safety, so pay close attention to the warnings on each light when you put a new bulb in.
7. Consider the Paint Color of the Room
If a room has dark paint on the walls, you’ll need more light to make it feel bright and cheery. If a room has light paint on the walls, you’ll need fewer light sources to keep the room adequately lit.
8. Consider the Use of LED Bulbs and Lighting Fixtures
LEDs are among the most efficient, most durable, most impressive light bulbs and lighting fixtures ever invented, yet most people don’t even know what they are.
Tashman Home Center
As your neighborhood home improvement store, Tashman Home Center is the place to head for bulbs, electrical supplies, and a large selection of lighting fixtures for your home, kitchen, and bath. Stop by Tashman Home Center’s Hardware Store, or shop online. We have over 60,000 items in stock; if we don’t have them, we’ll order them for you. We also have a knowledgeable and friendly staff, and we’re always happy to help in any way we can!
