Living Room Lighting

Your living room is the workhorse of your home. Most areas in a home are centred around a small set of activities, but a living room can be expected to be almost anything. We entertain there, we eat there, we rest there, we read there, we finish up doing our hair or get our outfit ready to go out in there. The balance between these activities is unique to every person or family but your blend of activities will dictate what living room lighting design is perfect for you.

Living room lighting can shed a light on your favourite prints, point your way to your favourite cosy armchair or make your family portraits more prominent. Layering your lighting is the perfect way to make your living room arrangement harmonious.

When you’re browsing the pendant lights, the close fittings, the table lamps, floor lamps and spotlights, the most important thing is to know how you use your space. If you mainly use your living room as your own personal cinema and the room is centred around a high spec television and sound set up, then you’ll want lights that can be angled down and away from the screen so that they don’t negatively affect the picture quality. This is a good cross over if you also like to read, lights that can be angled over a reading chair or a sofa.

Start with your ceiling light, and suit your light to your decorating scheme. A large pendant light is a perfect opportunity to get the maximum design impact for a minimum imposition on floor or surface space. There are beautiful silk, cotton and even Japanese paper boule options for pendant lampshades. You can hang one close to the ceiling with just enough gap to create artistic shadowing or lower over a feature piece of furniture to anchor your living area in place. Ceiling fixtures can be a great way to have mood lighting.

When you think of wind-down activities like reading or crafting, you will quickly come to the conclusion that as useful and attractive as ambient lights are when it comes to setting the tone, they do not give the kind of directed light you need for tasks. Table lamps or narrow beam floor lamps are a better choice to avoid eye strain and to allow you to subtly vary your lighting scheme without making the whole room over bright.

Adjustable table lamps and floor lamps are a multi-purpose choice that suit all sorts of tasks and positions. From the teenager who prefers to read sprawled out on the carpet to the upright armchair for Granny’s knitting.

Once you have the functional parts of your lighting design sorted out, you can turn your attention to accent lighting. Spotlights to show plants, pictures or artwork to their best advantage, or recessed lights to remove gloom from the corners of a larger room. Many smaller spotlights can be easy to install and energy-efficient, so there is no reason not to consider a spotlight here and there to accentuate the best bits and make sure that your careful choices in art and ornaments are shown to their best advantage.
Accent lighting can also look good in ornamental fireplaces or leading up a staircase if your stairs are in your living room. They also look attractive to backlight a sculpture.

Living room lighting has moved with the times and the popularity of LED lighting is only growing. Once only one type of LED was available, a white-blue tone which was clean but lacked some warmth. Now LED lights come in every tone imaginable and LED bulbs are available in sizes from microscopic string lights to large vintage balloon bulbs. The innovation hasn’t stopped there and you can now add smart lights that communicate directly with a phone or tablet and smart lights that include a speaker.
Living room lighting is important but there is the choice and potential to get it just right.