Everyone knows that the decor of a room can have a huge affect your mood–which is why we here at Fireside Furniture spend so much time and energy thinking about decor. In fact, we have an entire section of our website dedicated to decor.
But what about the lighting in your home? Nobody talks about lighting as much, but the truth is, gloomy corners or rooms with too much shadow can make it hard to get anything done.
Poor lighting can have a negative effect on our subconscious too – and our homes are meant to be our havens. Feeling happy, healthy and upbeat indoors is as much a question of cleverly using lighting as it is finding the best furniture for your home.
So if you need a few pointers to take those vital steps in the right direction, look no further. In this series, we’re exploring how to best light the most crucial rooms in your home–starting with part 1: the living room.
Lighting tips for your living room
As the name suggests, your living room is where you spent the bulk of your time indoors day to day. That means decent lighting in your living room is vital – both for the practical need to see what you’re doing, but also to feel at home.
Task lighting, ambient lighting, and accent lighting
The key to understanding how best to light your living room is understanding the differences between task lighting, ambient lighting and accent lighting. If those are new terms for you, no need to worry – we’ll give you examples of these as we tour the rooms of your house in this article.
Ambient Lighting
The broadest thing to keep in mind, especially in your living room, is the ambient lighting. This is often the lights that come on from your ceiling or via specially placed sconces around your walls – the main lights of the room.
To make a house a home, so to speak, it’s often a great idea to have your ambient living room lighting feature a warm, natural color. That’s especially useful in the winter when longer nights and dropping temperatures make a feeling of coziness that much more important.
Task lighting
However, keep in mind how you best use your living room space, as that can really inspire what other kinds of lighting you choose. For example, if you have a home office setup or a reading nook in your living room, lighting can play a wonderful role in enhancing those spaces.
This falls into task lighting – illumination you’ll be using to complete a given task. For example, a reading lamp next to your armchair and bookshelf can bring your escape within the home to life – but that kind of task lighting also serves the purpose of making losing yourself in a good book that much easier on your eyes.
Similarly, your home office desk can have a lamp for task lighting – you may well find it easier to pore over documents or see what you’re typing this way. It can be a lot easier to focus if you rely on a task light here than your ambient living room lighting alone.
Accent lighting
Here we can really have some fun. Accent lighting has a superb part to play in your living room, and it all comes down to your decor choices. If you have a collection of antiques, a prized family heirloom or a feature wall in your living room, for example, a strategically placed standing lamp or some embedded ceiling lights can really accentuate these highlights in your home.
And if your living room is a technological paradise, with a cool TV, decent sound system and those must-have consoles? Consider an accent light of LEDs or small lights behind your setup.
This pulls double duty as both accent and task lighting – it makes your gadgets look cooler, but it also makes using screens for extended periods easier on the eyes, all thanks to that backlighting.
Lighting other rooms in your house
Stay tuned for future articles in this series, where we will discuss lighting different rooms in your house, including the kitchen, the dining room, and bedrooms.
And remember, for all of your home furniture needs, check out Fireside Furniture on Route 23 in Pompton Plains, NJ or call us at 973-831-8311.
