Lighting plays an essential role in home decorating. More than an accessory, the right lighting illuminates the interior design, bringing your home’s best features into view.
Home lighting involves six basic lighting types—ambient, ceiling-mounted, task, dining, outdoor, and decorative. Take a closer look at all of these lighting types and how they can enhance every room in your house.
1. Ambient Lighting
Ambient lighting sets the mood of a room. It’s the most dominant lighting in a space and usually turns on with a flip of a switch. Ambient lighting illuminates a room while remaining inconspicuous, never calling attention to itself. Consider it an omnipotent option, usually showering light from above. There are a few fixtures that provide ambient lighting that you can choose from.
Floor Lamps
Floor lamps offer homeowners the ability to light a room without installing overhead lighting, which can clash with contemporary or modern interior design. Floor lamps are also an excellent ambient light option for two- story rooms or spaces with hard-to-reach vaulted ceilings.
2. Ceiling-Mounted Lights
Ceiling-mounted lights provide the most light in a room, and they can be flush or semi-flush with the ceiling. Flush fixtures are usually dome-shaped and touch the ceiling. Semi-flush lighting leaves a small gap between the ceiling and the fixture, creating an uplit reflection. Outside of natural sunlight, ceiling-mounted fixtures are the best choice for flooding a room with light.
Track Lighting
Track lighting provides flexibility, especially if each light fixture is adjustable. This allows you to point lighting at different areas in a room, similar to how lighting directors might illuminate a stage.
Don’t be afraid to experiment with the direction of each light in your track lighting fixture. For example, adjust individual heads on a fixed track light to highlight dishes behind a glass cabinet door, a statue in a niche, or a book collection on a shelf.
3. Task Lighting
As the name suggests, task lighting illuminates areas where you perform certain tasks, such as food preparation, reading, writing, sewing, or playing video games. This type of lighting is best if it’s glare-free and bright enough for you to perform the job at hand.
Task lighting can include lights under a kitchen cabinet, mounted above counters, or even beneath base cabinets. Fun fact: Desk lamps and floor lamps are portable task lighting that work in rooms like the kitchen too.
Under-Cabinet Lights
When it comes to task lighting in the kitchen, under-cabinet lights shine (literally). Under-cabinet lights can enhance food preparation, illuminate a coffee bar, or highlight a backsplash. This type of light can use LED puck lights, tape lighting, bar lights, or fluorescent bar lights.
4. Dining Lighting
Creating an inviting atmosphere in the dining area takes some thoughtful consideration about your lighting choices. Dining lighting is functional and also can contribute to the overall aesthetic appeal of the space. Two popular options for dining lighting are chandeliers and pendants, each offering a unique blend of style and illumination to enhance the dining experience.
Chandeliers
Chandeliers, which are hung from the ceiling with multiple branches or tiers, are a classic choice for dining rooms. Beyond providing ample illumination for the entire table, chandeliers are striking focal points, adding a touch of elegance and sophistication to the space.
Pendants
Pendant lights, suspended individually or in a group, offer a more customizable approach to dining lighting. Whether hung in a linear arrangement above the dining table or as a cluster to create visual interest, pendant lights provide focused illumination while allowing for creative expression in more modern designs.
5. Outdoor Lighting
Outdoor lighting is crucial in both functional and aesthetic aspects of exterior spaces. From enhancing safety to creating a welcoming atmosphere once the sun has set, outdoor lighting options offer many benefits to the outside of your home.
Landscape Lighting
Incorporating outdoor spotlights and floodlights into your interior design plans can create an exterior focal point for a sunroom, great room, or bedroom with large windows.
6. Decorative Lighting
Decorative lighting is the diva of home lighting, adding attitude to style. Instead of accentuating other objects, decorative lighting brings the spotlight on itself. It’s simply there to look fabulous.
Candelabra Lighting
Candelabras can feature real or faux candles, but the impact is the same: drama. Although associated with traditional design, candelabras also come in contemporary, modern, industrial, and even rustic lighting styles.
Cove Lighting
Cove lighting is installed near the ceiling to highlight architectural detail such as crown molding or a tray ceiling.
Sometimes called ambient luminescence, cove lighting diffuses light and can be iridescent or fluorescent. The proper placement is essential, so consider hiring a lighting professional to install it for you.
