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Illumination – Types Of Lighting for Your Home
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Illumination takes a leading role in the decoration. The right balance between the type and amount of light an area receives can transform the way it is perceived. This makes it possible to enhance or attenuate the decor and even intensify the value of the decorative elements (moldings, furniture, textiles, etc.).
With a good lighting plan, choice of lamps and distribution, you can change the look and atmosphere of a room. On the contrary, the misuse of lighting can spoil a good decorative idea.
During the remodeling or decoration of interior spaces it is important to plan in detail both natural and artificial light sources.
Following are some tips on the use of artificial lighting for interiors.
Artificial Indoor Lighting
- Keep in mind that in many cases only renewing the lighting can make big changes in decor.
- The interior lighting can be substantially different depending on the room to be illuminated. When we think of how to illuminate a room we cannot forget that it must have a sense of unity with the rest of the house. Organizing a general lighting scheme requires defining what role, both aesthetic and practical, the artificial light has to fulfill in each of the environments.
- The combination of different types of light (general, punctual, environmental or decorative) in one space allows interesting decorative resources, especially when they can also light up independently.
- The general lighting should always try to be gentle, avoiding glare or, on the contrary, lack of light to see where we walked. The other types of lighting come later, highlighting a particular area or distributing other lights around work spaces or reading areas.
The Language Of Light
- The intense light provokes energy, while soft light can cause drowsiness.
- Too much intense light can produce glare, and thus fatigue and sore eyes. Too much light can be given by several factors, due to the misplacement of the device or the excessive contrast between light and shadow.
- The warm light tends to relax and make us feel at ease, while the cold light calms us.
Regarding how to illuminate our homes in a more practical way, it would be necessary to establish four different categories of types of lighting, which should not be exclusive but rather complementary. Resorting to various types of lighting in the same space, which light up independently, can be the solution to adapt the space to different uses throughout the day. These four types of lighting are: general, accent (punctual), environmental and decorative.
How to Choose the Right Hallway Lighting? Let’s take a look.
General Lighting
A purely functional lighting to illuminate our home. General lighting that illuminates the entire space volume. It is usually achieved by sconces and ceiling lamps. It is advisable to use several light sources instead of using a single light source in the center of the room.
Speaking from a more decorative view, halogen usually has been used recessed in the ceiling for the general lighting of living areas; this is changing and the use of indirect lighting is being appreciated more and more through alcoves in walls and ceilings combined with just few halogens.
Accent Lighting
It is a more intense lighting, which aims to illuminate a particular activity. It is supplementary to the previous one, aiming at a specific point of the room, the dining table, the head of the bed… leaving the rest in shadow.
The relationship between this type of lighting and general lighting must be complementary, seeking a balance between both and avoiding excessive contrasts; on the one hand, trying to avoid glare and on the other hand, an excessive projection of shadows.
For this type of lighting, floor lamps and table lamps are commonly used in those areas destined for reading and writing; and suspended or ceiling lamps for the dining table, makeup or shaving area, work spaces, recreational areas, among others.
Environmental Lighting
This type of lighting is more geared to the creation of a theatrical effect rather than on the practicality. With this type of lighting you can search for colors or themes to give that special touch sought in your home. It is therefore a protagonist lighting, in which she is the center of attention.
To achieve this effect, there are often used warm lamps distributed along shelves or small tables, but we can use more daring resources throughout spotlights that project forms in motion, thus using kinetic lighting as those provided by candles or fire chimneys; being in motion, is a light that conveys the illusion of being alive.
Decorative Lighting
This lighting is used to enhance the details and illuminate a particular object. It is usually used to light a plant, a sculpture or a painting. In contrast with the previous type of lighting, this serves to give prominence to the object, the real center of attention.
This is also used to emphasize the ornamental aspects of our house and to enhance architectural effects, such as creating false realities when applying light in the base of a wall to produce a feeling of weightlessness on it.
MORE: Learn How To Illuminate Your Home’s Exterior With These Landscaping Lighting Ideas
Written by Oriana Gomez-Zerpa. September 1, 2016
Oriana is an accomplished architect with strong skills in creative thinking, conceptualization and design. She attended Architecture schools at the Polytechnic University of Madrid, Universidad Central de Venezuela. She later pursued her Master’s degree at the prestigious Politecnico di Milano in Italy. She shares with us her passion for interior design and architecture.
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The location of the light source in relation to the art is very important to avoid reflections. If it is, as in your case, an art protected by glass, an angle of about 30º to the wall give satisfactory results. However, I want to make a remark when it comes to lighting paintings that are made with oil or spatula. These techniques produce a number of reliefs of the most diverse shapes. These reliefs, added to the already known brightness of the materials, produce tiny reflective surfaces with many orientations, which cause reflections of the light in infinite directions, making… Read more »