Residential Lighting Design Guide
Your residential lighting design is perhaps one aspect of interior design and decorating that you don't consider as often as other elements. The thing to keep in mind is that how your home is lit has a significant impact on some of those elements, including color and safety. The best residential lighting design introduces variety in terms of fixtures and how the illumination is delivered. Does this Spark an idea?
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Functional Lighting
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The functional foundation of residential lighting is constructed around two specific types of fixtures. Ambient lighting refers to the overall illumination of an area or room. Task lighting refers to a lighting fixture that supplies illumination to a specific site within a room to help you see what you are doing.
Accent Lighting
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A third element in lighting design can also come into play, but it is not considered a necessary part of every lighting plan. Accent lighting refers to the purely decorative kind of lighting that is used for such things as casting a glow on a work of art hanging on the wall or creating an artistic impact with uplights fixed on the floor that serve to create a certain mood.
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Natural Light
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The final piece of the residential lighting puzzle is natural light. Your artificial lighting design will be significantly impacted by how much natural light filters into your home and how it arrives. The main thing to keep in mind about natural light is that it differs from artificial illumination by virtue of it being evenly distributed, less intense and the fact that it doesn't produce the same kind of sharply defined shadows.
Manipulating Natural and Artificial Light
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Natural lighting can become a manipulated part of your residential lighting design through clever use of windows. Opaque glass will reduce the force that natural light produces. Curtains and blinds can be opened or closed entirely or partially to block out sunlight. Artificial lighting can be combined with options like skylights to combat the effects of sunlight glare. Another option are low emittance windows that are equipped with a special glaze that can reduce energy use by 30 to 50 percent.
Sketch Modeling
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An effective method for producing a precise plan for interior lighting is to draw a sketch of each room and include the placement of furnishings. This process will reveal areas in need of task lighting such as an office desk or food preparation area. You can also refer to this sketch to determine the most effective placement of ambient lighting fixtures.
Lighting and Color Palette
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Just as the lighting will impact the way you see the colors of paint or wallpaper, so does your choice of interior colors impact the way light is used. Lighter palettes reflect light and therefore mandate less illumination than the same room would require if decorated in dark colors.
Match Fixtures to the Need
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The most efficient and affordable method of buying new lighting fixtures is not to buy the fixture and then try to figure out the best place for it. Instead, you should figure out what type of fixture you need for a specific use or area and then shop around with that information in mind.
Enhancing Character of Rooms
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Lighting design can also enhance the character of your room. A room populated with shaded lamps will have a significantly different feel to it than a room lit by futuristic track lighting. Match the fixture to the feel of the surrounding décor to create a harmonizing effect. A more jarring effect is produced by introducing lighting fixtures that seem out of time or place. Another consideration is to shop around for whimsically designed fixtures that can provide the impetus for the surrounding design choices.
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References
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- Photo Credit interior image by Dmitry Ersler from Fotolia.com
