Getting the right light fixtures and bulbs for each room of your home can be a challenge, but if you plan it out correctly, they can help you enjoy the time spent at home so much more. Let’s take a look at some sample home lighting design ideas for different rooms of a typical home.

For the living room, you’ll want to have enough general lighting for such a large space. This general lighting can come from one or more main ceiling fixtures, or perhaps several indirect lighting fixtures that reflect light down from your ceiling and provide soft illumination for the entire room.

However, you will also most likely want to include specific task lighting for certain activities that may be performed in the living room. This could include reading or sewing. Task lighting is usually best accomplished by a floor lamp or table lamp situated right next to the task area, and equipped with a sufficient bulb to prevent eyestrain while performing the task.

Living rooms can also have features like a fireplace, or perhaps a large painting on the wall. Why not install some recessed ceiling lights that are focused on these special features to highlight and bring attention to them?

In the kitchen, sufficient lighting is an absolute must to be able to safely cook and prepare food. Most likely a large ceiling fixture, perhaps equipped with energy efficient florescent tubes will do well to supply the overall general lighting for the room. But then consider installing strip lights underneath your cabinets that will clearly light up your countertops and work areas. And perhaps a few recessed lights in the ceiling can focus even more light on your sink area and range. Generally speaking, the more specific task lighting you can have in a kitchen, the better.

Bathrooms have their own specific lighting needs, including a recessed downlight in the ceiling over your shower or tub area. But perhaps the most common area for lighting fixtures in a bathroom is around the mirror. Here’s where you want really soft and gentle lighting that leaves no shadows under your eyes, nose, and chin. Very often this is accomplished with lighting strips on each side of the mirror that contained several small wattage bulbs. Many people find that soft white fluorescent bulbs seem to work best in this area.

In the bedroom a general lighting fixture is very useful for illumination of the entire room. But then installing specific task lighting at the dressing table area can be very beneficial too. And recessed lighting on the ceiling placed on a dimmer switch can be used very effectively to set a romantic mood whenever you desire.

Hopefully these home lighting design ideas and suggestions can help you think about how you can better focus the available light in your home from room to room in the future.

Using the correct lighting fixtures and bulbs throughout your home is a skill that can help you enjoy the time spent at home even more. That’s because home lighting can be useful for two intended purposes, the first being function, and the second being mood.

With that in mind, consider each room in your home and what it is mainly used for. What are the activities that often go on in that room? How much light will be usually needed for those activities? Are there any points of interest in the room that you would really like to draw attention to?

Asking these questions can help you lay out your home lighting design so that it fits both form and function. Most lighting fixtures that you choose for your design will most likely fall into one of three categories, general lighting, task lighting, and accent lighting. Let’s discuss each of these in greater detail.

General lighting is perhaps the kind of lighting that most people are familiar with. It’s very simply the most prominent lighting source in the room, very often an overhead fixture. As its name implies, it provides a general, overall source of light for the entire room. These general type of lighting fixtures can be very simple or very ornate, but their first and foremost job is to provide sufficient lighting for the occupants of the room to be able to move around safely.

The next type of home lighting that we want to consider is called task lighting, and this is an area where many home lighting designs are found to be insufficient. The purpose of task lighting is to help illuminate a specific area for a certain kind of task that will be performed there. For instance, if there is a reading area in a room, it would be very appropriate to have either a floor lamp or a table lamp positioned very close to the seating arrangement with the correct bulb wattage to ensure that a person will be able to read comfortably not only for a few minutes, but even for a prolonged period of time.

Once again, this is where many home lighting designs fall short. Quite often, many folks expect a general lighting fixture for each room to be sufficient for the tasks that are performed there. But this is not always the case, especially with activities that call for focused reading over a period of time, or specialized tasks performed in the kitchen. So the proper use of task lighting can improve your enjoyment and effectiveness of tasks and activities performed at home.

Finally, consider also accent lighting. This kind of lighting fixture is not meant to provide illumination for activities in a specific room, as much as it is meant to focus attention on a particular feature or area of the room that you wish to highlight or set a mood for. A good example of accent lighting is when lights are focused on a painting on a wall. These lights don’t really contribute that much to the overall light level of the room, but they do bring attention to the painting instead, which is what they are designed to do.

There is an almost endless array of lighting fixtures that can be used for all three kinds of lighting, whether it be general, task, or accent lighting. But try to think ahead and plan out each room in your home so that you can use each kind of lighting fixture to its maximum potential.