How to Choose the Proper Lighting for a Family Room

By eHow Home & Garden Editor

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Choosing the proper lighting for a room involves taking the time to determine your needs. By truly assessing your needs before making any purchases, you will be able to determine what you need while you are at a lighting store. Otherwise, you may choose lighting that ends up being inefficient and find yourself needing to make one or more returns.

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Instructions

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Step1

View the light in your family room at various times of day. Be sure to position your blinds or draperies as they will be on the average day at different times in the family room.

Step2

Take note of dark spots in the room that may need to be illuminated. For example, if you usually read a book in a chair in the corner of the family room at 4:00 in the afternoon, be sure you check the lighting in that specific corner at that specific time of day.

Step3

If you have a sofa table or end tables, you will want to have appropriate lamps on them. Be sure that the lamps you choose not only reflect the style of your family room, but the scale of the tables as well. Generally, you can use taller lamps to add height to sofa tables than you can on end tables.

Step4

You will want overhead light to be bright enough so that as many areas as possible are illuminated. Can lighting can often aid with this process.

Step5

Some people enjoy having a ceiling fan attached to the lighting in their family rooms. If you live in a temperate or humid climate, you may enjoy having a ceiling fan for hot and humid days and evenings.

Step6

Allow as much natural light into the family room as possible. Natural light is soothing and can help you relax and unwind.

Step7

Consider adding specific lighting to pictures on the walls.

Step8

Be sure that the lighting in the family room does not cast a glare on the television.

Tips & Warnings

An interior decorator can help you make decisions about lighting in your family room. If you have never attempted this task before, you may want input from a professional.