home lighting as an essential decorating element
Lighting is the most essential element in the decoration of home. We all need to bring
more lighting into our homes. Lighting creates, paradoxically, both reality and
illusion.
Lighting fixtures illuminate our treasured objects and
highlights our favorite colors, as well as affects our mood, performance, and
mental health on a daily basis.
Light is the source of life, giving us needed energy and
uplifting our spirits. Without light, life stops.
Many homes are gloomy simply because they don't have enough
lighting fixtures. Interior designers quite literally trying to bring light and
energy inside the home. Your life can be in effect a reflection of divine lighting.
When you are inside rooms not fully exposed to boundless
energy from the sunshine, create happy illusions with everything that is light
catching, loving, and illuminating.
Is your home a house of light?
Even a house with lots of windows cannot
guarantee sunny weather. But with artificial lighting, properly arranged, your
rooms can shine brightly. You must raise your consciousness about the
therapeutic benefits of light and make lighting fixtures a high priority in the
decoration of your house. Without lighting, there would be no color, and when
the lighting is dim, it dampens the vitality of a room and depresses your
spirit. Balance plays an important part in the lighting of the home. There are
three types of lighting - general, task, and accent, and all three sources must
work in harmony, with one not dominating at the expense of the other two. The
combined lighting effect should provide the most evenly balanced light and
maximum versatility for different purposes, such as lighting for conversation,
reading or accenting a collection of favorite objects.
Explore ways to enhance the transforming power of lighting in
every room of your home. The pleasures of living in a well-lit home don't lessen, even with time.
Beautiful, functional lighting makes a difference every single day in the way
you live and how you feel about your home.
Any discussion
about lighting your home has to begin with natural light. To the human eye, the
desirable norm is sunlight. Part of its appeal is its variety. Consider the
clear illumination on a cloudless mountaintop. Compare that to the diffused
light on a misty morning or the intense brightness on a tropical beach. Then
there's the changeability of sunlight between a cool rainy day, a clear winter
afternoon, and a full summer blaze, or the contrast between the color of
sunlight at noon and the way it appears as afternoon wears into evening.
The amount and quality of natural light a room receives depends on the size of
its windows and its orientation with regard to the sun. South-facing windows get
the lion's share of direct sunlight for most of the day. East-facing rooms
benefit from early mornings, while rooms that face west are sunny in the
afternoon. Because its back is to the sun, a north-facing room receives only
indirect natural light and tends to be cool and dim.
When you are renovating or redecorating a room, always look at the existing
space and take the seasons, time of day, and orientation of the windows into
consideration. Sometimes making a window bigger, or adding another one, doesn't
make a room brighter. If the window's sitting is toward the north, the room will
just get colder. You can make a breakfast nook cheerier with a window that faces
east, but don't try to take a late afternoon nap in a room with west-facing
windows, unless you can control the light with shades, blinds, or lined
curtains.
The natural light in the room will affect any tasks you perform as well. Never
arrange furniture, such as a desk or worktable, so that you are facing directly
into bright sunlight. But be careful about having your back to a window. This
can create shadows on your work surface. Ideally, follow the old axiom that
recommends "light coming from over the left shoulder." By charting the light,
and arranging your room and selecting window treatments accordingly, you can
avoid problems.
