Light, Space, and Their Effect on Our Lives
Selecting the right lighting for home is about more than just choosing a pretty lamp or a unique light fixture. While your light fixtures should reflect your overall style, interior design lighting has a much bigger impact on the look and feel of your home.
Just how color plays a big part in making us perceive a space as a certain size and create a certain mood, lighting also creates perceptions to the space we're surrounded with. Use this to your advantage.
Either natural or man-made, without light other elements, namely color, texture and pattern, have no significance at all. Light sets in the mood and ambience into a living space and highlights the other elements of interior design, including space, line and forms. While smart placement of doors and windows should take care of the natural light, man-made or artificial lighting can work wonders for your home.
The Three Types of Lighting
photo by Scott Frances
Ambient lighting
The goal of ambient lighting is to provide even, overall light to a room. This is most often accomplished with recessed lighting or a beautiful chandelier. Wall-mounted lighting like a sconce also provides ambient lighting.
Always use dimmers with ambient lighting! This way you can adjust the lighting level based on the time of day or mood you’d like to create. You can have multiple circuits in a room so you can dim some lights while keeping others brighter.
Most people understand the need for ambient lighting, but too many stop there. Ambient lighting is just the base, upon which you must add the other two layers of lighting.
Task lighting
Task lighting is important when performing specific tasks, like reading, doing homework, cooking or getting ready in the bathroom.
Stylish table lamps and floor lamps are perfect for this purpose in living areas and bedrooms. You can even use picture lights to highlight artwork in your home.
In the kitchen, use pendant and under cabinet lighting to illuminate cooking and food prep areas.
Task lighting for a bathroom include bath bars and sconces. For a contemporary look consider adding a pendant light, it’s becoming increasingly popular in bathrooms.
photo by Ylighing
photo by steelcase
Accent lighting
Accent lighting brings added visual interest to a room by creating different focal points and is another important element of lighting design.When you plan your accent lighting, ask yourself how you want each room to feel, and which elements you want to highlight or hide.
Accent lighting highlights specific objects like art, sculptures and bookcases. It can also be used to highlight a textured wall, or other architectural features.
Classic track lighting and picture lights are often used to provide accent lighting.
What Role Does Light Play in Our Everyday Lives?
picture by Freshhome
Circadian Rhythm
Central to any discussion of light is the circadian rhythm. The term refers to the roughly 24-hour period it takes the earth to revolve once around its axis. Many aspects of human physiology are biologically pegged to this period, most noticeably the internal clock that controls our sleep-wake cycle. For example, the release of the hormone melatonin, which prepares us for sleep, is triggered by the onset of darkness. During the day, it is suppressed, enabling us to fully awaken and become energized before the cycle repeats itself again. Attuning your sleep-wake cycle to the circadian rhythm is the key to feeling well, and the light we're exposed to plays a huge part in this.
Natural Lighting
To give you some measure of the havoc that the absence of daylight can wreak on mind and body, researchers found that people who work in windowless environments on average get 46 minutes less sleep on work nights, experience lower-quality rest, and are less physically active during the workday than colleagues who are afforded adequate exposure. If that weren’t disturbing enough, medical scientists report higher levels of depression, anxiety, delirium, and even psychosis among patients lacking access to outside views in healthcare facilities. Keep scrolling to check out some tips regarding natural light incorporation.
photo by NB design group
photo by trendmagazin
Level of Illumination
Sometimes less is more, off is on, and dimmer is brighter.
That’s what psychologists Anna Steidel and Lioba Werth discovered when they assessed the effects of light intensity on creative insight. According to their findings, on average people exhibit a greater aptitude for solving creative problems working under relatively dim light than in a typical office or highly illuminated setting, like a television studio.
As for why darker is better for out-of-the-box thinking, Steidel theorizes that bright lights give people the impression they’re under surveillance, which in turn makes them feel less free to take risks for fear of criticism.
Tips to Use Light to the Best of Your Advantage
bring more natural light into your space
For starters, position mirrors across from window walls to bounce whatever light does filter in back into the room.
Choose pale colors throughout. Opt for higher gloss paint finishes than normally recommended.
Replace solid doors with glazed units.
Minimize window drapery. Steer clear of thick pile carpet and other light-sucking materials on floors and walls.
Keep surfaces free of dust for maximum reflectiveness.
And hang artwork evocative of the sunlit outdoors — a number of studies indicate that visual representations of eye-catching scenery can elicit the same psychological response as seeing the real thing.
For spaces where adding more natural light isn’t an option, avoid cluttered furniture arrangements.
Of course, too much of a good thing can be bad. A work environment with excessive sunlight can result in glare, unwanted heat gain, faded materials, and other unintended consequences. If that’s an issue in your space, I suggest installing Venetian blinds, exterior awnings, landscaping, or other configurable shading devices to modulate light intensity and direction as needed.
use artificial light efficiently
The first step is to replace your fixed-temperature bulbs with app-controlled LED lighting products. With these smart systems, you can program your fixtures to mimic the color transformations and intensities of the sun in real time. Keep them set at amber at night to further minimize pattern disruption.
Incorporating corner lamps, wall sconces and centrally located ceiling fixtures can brighten the room and create a visually larger space.
Strategically placed pendant lights or chandeliers above the dining room table are a must. And of course, don’t forget to install dimmers to your dining room lighting. It is a fantastic way to add drama and ambience.
A good ceiling light is also necessary in the kitchen (for example, recessed lighting). The kitchen is also a great place to combine aesthetics with functionality. The use of under-cabinet lighting can greatly define the character of that space, all while adding functionality.
When it comes to electronic devices, the best strategy for maintaining circadian rhythms is to power them off one to two hours before bedtime.