Bright Ideas

By Kelly Seto

Lighting adds to the inherent drama of a room. It is sometimes overlooked or ignored but plays an essential role in setting the mood and personality of your home. It is the one factor that pulls all the other elements in design together.

There are four distinct lighting applications: decorative, accent, ambient, and task illumination. These lighting applications complement each other, and your home, when they work together. Lighting techniques have evolved well beyond simple table lamps and chandeliers, and no single application can perform all of the functions of lighting for a specific space. However, the right combination of light sources can make a dramatic difference in your home.

Decorative light fixtures, such as chandeliers, wall sconces and table lamps, work best to create the sparkle for a room. They alone cannot provide all the illumination a space needs without overpowering its other design aspects. For example, a single chandelier in a dining room would be too overpowering if its dimmer was turned up as bright as it would go. The intensity of light would be too strong. Instead, try placing accent lighting with low voltage recessed fixtures at both ends of your table. This will complement the illumination from the chandelier and provide the necessary lighting, while enhancing the sparkle of your crystal ware.

Accent light highlights objects within a space, bringing attention to art, sculpture, tabletops, and plants. Accent light cannot be the only source of illumination as it would be quite spotty. Good accent lighting thrives on subtle ambient (general) lighting to create a wonderful effect. People will not notice the fixture of the accent light; they will only set their eyes on the object being illuminated. For proper accenting, the output should be 3 to 10 times the ambient light level.

Ambient light is general low-level lighting that fills the room with a warm glow. It softens shadows on people?s faces and is the base light layer on which the others are built. Opaque wall sconces, torchieres, indirect pendants and cove lighting can provide soft illumination without drawing attention to the light source. Some decorative chandeliers and pendant fixtures are designed to serve a dual purpose, providing ambient light as well as decorative light.

Task light is for performing work related activities in your home, such as reading, cutting vegetables, and working on the computer. There should be a task light located on either side of you, to prevent glare bouncing back into your eyes.

A lighting design is successful when more than one of these lighting applications is layered within a room to create a fully usable adaptive space. Every homeowner has their own vision as to how each individual space in their home should be used. Lighting, when properly introduced, can allow immense flexibility. For example a basement can become a poolroom, conversation area, or be transformed into a home theatre by changing the lighting effect.

By taking into consideration each room?s use you can create a comprehensive lighting design for your home, using decorative, accent, ambient, and task lighting sources. The lighting in a well-planned dining room serves as an excellent example of this. It would start with accent low voltage recessed lighting positioned to highlight artwork and both ends of dining room table, along with two decorative lamps placed on both sides of the buffet and a chandelier located over the center of the dining room table. Sconces would be situated on each end of the fireplace to create a glowing ambient setting. By subtly using layers of accent, decorative and ambient lighting throughout a room in this way, the warmth of the room is enhanced and ambience is heightened.

These lighting guidelines apply to the exterior of your homes as well. Landscape lighting can give you greater enjoyment of your home, as well as safeguarding and adding value to it. You should start with task and decorative lighting to light your house sufficiently so that people can see the entry and how to reach it by following a walkway. Low-voltage fixtures are safe to use outdoors, no longer cost more than non-low-voltage fixtures, and last longer. By putting them on timers or using photocells, they turn on and off according to a preset program or by the presence or absence of natural light.

Ambient low-voltage landscape lighting can be used to add glamour to an area by placing low-voltage lights in a tree and casting a beam downward, or by placing the lamps upward to accent a tree. When installing landscape lighting, there is one major challenge - don't over do it. Consider the stars and moonlight as another set of ambient lights.

Look Beyond The Simple Wall Switch

Kelly advises homeowners to take into account another important feature that will increase the aesthetic appeal of their home: looking beyond the simple wall switch. Consider dimmers for complete control over your environment. Some options are simple wall box dimmers that replace any existing switch, or infrared remote dimmers, which are compatible with any learnable remotes. There are also whole home dimming systems available that are retrofitable, using the existing wire or radio frequency to preset scenes. They can be linked into your home security system and a single button can turn on up to 20 different lights (and at different levels) for security and convenience.