The Ultimate Guide: Lighting Layers To Create The Perfect Home

When you build your dream home, you wish to perfect every minute detail. From construction to the final stages of interior designs, your eyes will run around to ensure everything goes well.

Lighting up your home is an essential part of an interior glow-up. After all, your home should be where your heart is. And, if your home is not well-lit, then you might not prefer to spend much time at your home. So, let's get down to the basics of sprucing up your home with appropriate light layering.

Why is layering essential?

While choosing lights for your home, how do you know what suits your kitchen, bedroom, or reading space? Choosing the best ones might seem a tricky task at hand. And, most people end up buying lights that are simply affordable and attractive. However, it's a common mistake; one that we're here to help you avoid.

There is a wide array of lighting fixtures available in the market today. Any cheap lighting fixture or heavily illuminated mount will not instantly brighten up your room. Instead, it may end up as a nasty disaster in the long run. So, what else can you actually do to light up your home?

Identifying and understanding your spaces is the first step before choosing any lighting for your home. Each corner of your home is unique and serves different and diverse purposes. It’s better to be mindful and pick the lights that are best suited to the space you have in mind.

The next thing to remember is that no single light can instantly fix the illumination of any room or space in your home properly. On the other hand, cramming up the room with an endless number of lights is also not advisable. Instead, you need to strike a balance between these extremes. Opt for lighting fixtures that offer improved functionality and add elegance & life to your home.

Moreover, to create a well-balanced room, it's essential to layer your lighting. The vital layers you must consider while brightening your home are ambient, task, and accent lighting. Wondering what these are? Well, let's look at each one of them to help you better understand the art of lighting your home.

1. Ambient Lighting

The most essential element of any space is the glow it has. Ambient lighting creates a warm and welcoming atmosphere at home. It acts as the primary source of light in your room. Ambient lighting helps you draw attention toward the objects of focus in every room.

Adding a source of ambient lighting can instantly modify the color tone of the room. Being a glare-free lighting source, it is calming and helps to elevate the mood of the room. Generally, it's advised to use light bulbs of 20 lumens per foot as ambient lights; so that the light reaches the required corners of the room.

Photo by Thgusstavo Santana

There's a wide range of options to choose your ambient lighting. Consider opting for fixtures like chandeliers, pendants, flush mounts, or even simply daylight; these can add both style design and illumination to your living space.

If you're looking to add a majestic grandeur to your home, you can be sure that chandeliers and spectacular pendants will be the perfect choices to complement your architecture effortlessly. These make the best welcoming statement for your home.

The Regina Andrew and Arteriors collections of chandeliers have multiple options for you to choose from. For example, to add a romantic look to your hall, consider opting for the Cheshire Basin chandelier to spread light evenly with a brilliant dazzle. However, if “too shiny” is not your thing, then just go minimalistic with elegant pendants and mini pendants. These will suitably break the “boring” aspect of your dining or bedroom with their inherent beauty. Much like chandeliers, you could consider investing in pendants like Cyan Design to illuminate your spaces and form charming silhouettes.

Mini pendants are great picks when it comes to improving the mood palette of the room. Instead of buying extreme contrast lights, you can opt for these. They come in desired sizes and shapes for the perfect touch of elegance and brilliant lighting. At Lighting Gallery, we offer a wide selection of lighting fixtures and mini pendants such as the Tala Basalt pendant and Regina Andrew pendant. Tala Basalt is a piece of modern beauty while the Regina Andrew gives a vintage look to your room.

Based on the traditional or contemporary theme of your home, flush mounts are also remarkable choices for ambient lighting. You could choose the grandeur of a Regina Andrew flush mount or opt for a simplistic one like Areteriors sconce. They will help you hit the perfect balance of lighting design and intensity for the best ambient lighting in your rooms.

2. Task Lighting

Investing in light fixtures for your daily tasks and activities is equally important as choosing your sources for ambient lighting. Just imagine laying down on your couch for a read or wanting to cuddle with your loved ones in your lounge. If the lighting is too moody and casts unnecessary shadows, it's gonna spoil your spirits for sure.

Task lights are ergonomically designed to provide focused lighting to rooms. They can be best described as functional lights that reduce strain on your eyes while performing any tasks. While placed in a specific corner, task lights are neatly aligned to avoid any hindrance to your work. 

Photo by Mark McCammon

Similar to ambient lighting, task lighting can be achieved through a wide range of options such as lamps, floor lights, pendants, under cabinet lights, and several other lighting options.

The simplest sources of task lights are traditional lamps. Be it bedrooms, study tables, or reading corners, lamps are easy to install and use. They are less reflective and are a good source of minimal lighting. Regina Andrew offers an attractive collection of sleek-designed table lamps to add a touch of elegance with a dramatic feel.

For the dining spaces, you could go with a suspension-like pendant that amplifies the sophisticated yet warm feel of dining. Meanwhile, in the kitchen, opt for under-cabinet lighting to illuminate the countertops. An intuitive method in choosing task light is based on the type of activity in each room. Doing this will let you pick small or big lights for task lights according to the necessity.

3. Accent Lighting

Will simply well-lit rooms make a house a home? Well, not really! Everybody wants exciting rooms that greet them happily; spaces where we wish to come back over and over. So, here comes the final layer of lighting - accent lighting. These lights will help you accentuate the illumination of your home rooms to create a more desirable style.

Thoughtfully curating the accent lighting will allow you to showcase the best possible side of your home. You can highlight the unique corners of your home with them.

A general rule of thumb many interior decorators swear by is to set the brightness of accent lights around thrice that of other surrounding lights. This will draw due attention to any piece of artwork, or a treasured souvenir, thereby helping you accentuate those special corners in your home. For instance, if you want to highlight a feature wall, opt for recessed lighting that adds admirable arc light effects to complement the room's overall appeal.

You can choose an Arterior sconce or Regina Andrew sconce to add a sense of grandeur and eloquence to your home's interiors. Spotlighting can also be achieved through unique and imperial pendants and chandeliers for the perfect illumination.

Photo by Max Vakhtbovych

Adding the final touch to lighting your home

Understanding the basics of light layers is crucial in complementing the theme of your home, be it contemporary or traditional. Always remain mindful while browsing for lighting fixtures. Factors like lighting type and controls will fetch you elegance while bringing out the most efficient lighting layers to your home.

Finally, be sure to choose between cool and warm bulbs while selecting the lighting layers for your home. Striking the perfect balance of cool-toned and warm lighting will allow you to achieve the desired drama and brilliance that you've envisioned for each corner of your home! Be sure to check out Lighting Gallery's extensive collection of exquisite lighting to help you make the best pick! Master the science of lighting and achieve the goodness of illumination with us!