Now that days are shorter, it’s a good time to think about the lighting in your home. Not enough light can make the most beautiful home seen dull, gloomy and cold. Light changes our mood and gets the endorphins going--especially important in the cold winter months.
Lighting is one of the best ways to add drama to a room. The right lighting can help make a room appear larger or taller. It can highlight, accent, define and contribute to the ambiance of a room. When it comes to selling your home, the right kind of lighting can be very helpful in showcasing its attractiveness and appeal.
To make a room appear taller use vertical beams from low hanging pendant lights. Making a room appear larger can be achieved with the use of mirrors skillfully placed where they will serve to open up a room. Accent lighting can also help create the illusion of space and set a unique mood in a room. Add lighting with up lights, recessed lighting, smaller lamps, and artwork spotlighting. To make a large room with high ceilings feel more welcoming, consider setting up several table lamps to create smaller, low pools of light.
When choosing bedside lamps make sure they are tall enough and bright enough to throw a beam of light down onto a book when you are sitting up in bed. A good rule of thumb is that when pairing a table lamp with an end table, the combined height of the two should be approximately 58” – 64”. First measure your night table, it’s height will determine the proper table lamp size.
A three-way lamp, also known as a tri-light, is a lamp that uses a three-way bulb to produce three levels of light in a low-medium-high configuration. A three-way lamp requires a three-way bulb and socket, and a three-way two-circuit switch. Unlike a lamp controlled by a dimmer, each of the filaments operates at full voltage and the normal temperature for an incandescent bulb, so the colour of the light does not change over the three steps of light available.
Unless you want to highlight a certain lamp, the best practice is to keep all of the lamps at the same height (or at least within inches of one another). The reason being that visually, when you look across the room, your eye will not be drawn to a particular lamp because it is dramatically taller (or shorter) than another.