Lighting your home with class and efficiency is an important practice these days. Choosing a lighting fixture depends on many parameters, and can quickly become a difficult task. Which luminaire is right for which room? What criteria should you consider to make the right choice? How to harmonize lighting and interior design? How to light your worktop? To answer these and other questions and help you choose your luminaire, we’ve put together a few tips in this article.
Definition of a luminaire
Let’s start by briefly recalling what a luminaire is. Quite simply, it’s a device for providing light. They come in all shapes and sizes, for both indoor and outdoor use. We’ll focus on those for interiors.
Which luminaire for which room
There are several types of lighting to meet people’s needs. You’ll find ceiling lights, pendant lamps, mirror lamps, spotlights, framed spotlights, furniture spotlights, chandeliers, table lamps, floor lamps and wall lights.
Choosing lighting for every room in the house
For the bathroom
Bathroom lighting must meet certain safety requirements, particularly if it is used in the vicinity of a shower or bathtub. It must have a high IP rating to prevent electrical accidents. Taking this parameter into account, the choice is made according to the desired ambience. A ceiling light that imitates daylight is ideal for a functional powder room.
Recessed or recessed LED ceiling or spot lights consume less energy and, thanks to their ability to change lighting color, let you choose the mood of the room. For an intimate, cocooning ambience, we recommend furniture lights or mirror lamps, useful for illuminating strategic points in the room.
For small bathrooms, these types of lighting are ideal, as they don’t take up space and the brightness isn’t harsh on the eyes. In addition to the type of luminaire, you can choose the style to match your decor. You can also install a hanging lamp in your bathroom.
For your stay
The living room, which includes the lounge and dining room, is the room where we spend most of our time, where we receive our guests, it’s really the living room. You’ve certainly taken great care to decorate your living room to match your personality, and you want the lights to match your choices, so you need to choose the right lighting.
As with the bathroom and other rooms in the house, you need to determine the environment and light intensity you want in order to choose the right lighting fixtures. Ceiling, pendant and wall lights are the first choice for illuminating the living room. For added luminosity, add table lamps or floor lamps. They can also be substituted for chandeliers and other ceiling lights to create a subdued light.
Sometimes it’s impossible to fix a lamp to the ceiling, so to compensate for this inconvenience, you can put lights on walls, on furniture or even on the floor, such as spotlights, floodlights, table lamps or sconces. A suspension lamp with a large lampshade will decorate this living space to perfection.
For the bedroom
The bedroom is where you sleep, where you need peace and quiet and to be able to rest for the whole night, a place of disconnection. Here, we avoid overly bright, intense lighting in favor of soft, low-intensity lighting. Bedside lamps allow you to see clearly so you can read while in bed, while lights embedded in the headboard are a great alternative to bedside lamps, especially if you’re short of space.
It’s perfectly possible to install a ceiling pendant or ceiling light, as well as wall sconces or large floor lamps. Do you have a sloping ceiling? Consider LED panel lights, spotlights, recessed spotlights or strip lights.
For corridors and staircases
These high-traffic areas need to be well lit, of course. However, these lights are not intended to remain switched on continuously, which leads us to consider lights that will automatically switch off after passage, in case you forget to press the switch, or lights that detect presence.
In the staircase or hallway, you can opt for wall lights, LED strips, motion detectors, ceiling lights or recessed wall lights, as well as recessed spotlights. You can also make the most of outside light with windows or skylights. Track-mounted lamps are ideal for lighting long corridors, while recessed spotlights at stair treads provide better visibility, especially at night. A hanging lamp placed in strategic locations, such as the entrance, will emphasize these areas by providing the extra lighting that may be needed.
Tips for choosing the right ceiling light for your kitchen
The kitchen is the heart of the home, the room where meals are prepared. It can be closed or open, in the latter case inviting friends and family to eat in. The choice of luminaire is also important and depends largely on these two points. Think about a functional light that will allow you to see well when cooking. A ceiling lamp will provide good light for your small kitchen, but the same light may be insufficient in a larger room.
In this case, you’ll need to add other ceiling lights or other types of lighting. If you have an open kitchen, you may prefer a softer light for the dining area, with an LED ceiling light, so as not to be assaulted by too much brightness during meals, while good lighting is essential above the worktop. Here, you’ll choose a ceiling fixture with a more intense brightness, or one made up of several track-mounted lamps to provide better illumination and avoid shadows.
If you have furniture above your worktop, you can install strip lights or spotlights to provide the desired illumination. Whether it’s a large pendant, track-mounted lamps or several ceiling-mounted lights, it’s up to you to choose the right lighting for your kitchen. Why not opt for a mix of all these? And with LED lights around the worktop for optimum illumination, all you have to do is concoct delicious dishes.
What about you, how have you or how do you plan to decorate your kitchen? Tell us in the comments!
