What is a living room without the appropriate amount of lighting? What “appropriate” means for you depends entirely on several factors and today we’ll be decoding those factors, so you can choose the best light for your particular living room.
Exploring the land of light fixtures to find the best one
Light fixtures are a plenty. They vary in color, size, shape and design and can come in several variations on top of that. This is why this decision is so important and hard to make, especially if this is your first time shopping for light fixtures and you are yet to design the room.
In general, there are two main questions any interior designer will ask you, what is the current decoration and is it a brand new room? If it’s a brand new room you can easily tie in everything together since it’s basically a blank canvas which you can comfortably draw on.
In case it’s an already established interior design, you need to consider the already available décor and styles which have already been put into the room. This makes your choice a bit more difficult, but in no way impossible.
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The height of the room
The height of the room will determine what type of light fixture you will be going for. There are light fixtures which are a lot longer and hand a lot more than others.
Chandeliers which hang low can create the sensation of fullness in the room, but can also make you feel cramped. Rooms with low ceilings are best outfitted with smaller, more compact lights like recessed lights or a short chandelier – wall lights also work well.
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The width of the room
The width and overall square footage of the room will also determine what sort of light and how many of them you are getting. Picking a pack of light fixtures for your ceilings and walls will make the designing of the room a lot easier and it might save you some money, since manufacturers provide better value for larger purchases rather than individual items (look at any major store in North America)
If the room is larger than 40 square feet, then you’d most definitely need more than 1 ceiling light, regardless of how bright it may be. This is quite a lot square footage for a single light to cover and it will leave the sensation of dark, cramped locations.
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The location of the lights
The location of the light fixtures in the room is also an important factor which will determine how well the space is lit. The larger the location and more square footage it is, the more light fixture you will need – with both wall mounted and free standing fixtures providing some source of lighting you can also utilize them in your interior design.
Any room with more than 30 square feet of floor space, would require at least 2 ceiling mounted light sources in order to provide adequate lighting. And then we come to the question of dark spots, wall positions and all of that jazz, will requires additional light fixtures light sconces and light fixtures of that particular type.
