Do Your Lighting Fixtures
Create Mood and Atmosphere

Skillfully placed lighting fixtures, clever techniques add new dimensions to any room, create mood and atmosphere. Lighting your home is much more than choosing useful fixtures and lamps for practical purposes. This is an essential of course, but just as important is the mood and atmosphere you create through skillful lighting. Illuminations in the home has gone far beyond the single ceiling bulb, or a few lamps scattered around the room.



Today you can have almost any kind of lighting fixtures, in the most unusual places. Incandescent, concealed lighting can glow on the ceiling or walls; spot lights can be used to focus attention on sculptire, plants, artifacts and paintings; strip lighting can be concealed under window valances, along the top of bookshelves, in alcoves to throw direct light onto objects and accessories.

Lighting fixtures in your home needs as much careful thought and planning as all other aspects of decorating. Two of the main factors in lighting are mood desired and comfort of vision; in other words what will be going on in the area, and what will the light be used for specifically? To acheive desired results, you should control the following.

Intensity Intensity of light should depend on brightness of objects to be looked at, and color scheme of the room. For instance, darker objects need more light, as does a darker color scheme. Therefore a room with white walls needs the least light.

Distribution Distribution of light depends on the size of the room. Naturally, a larger room needs more lights equally distributed to avoid too many contrasts in light and shadow. Some contrast is desirable, but increased illumination may make sharp contrasts uncomfortable. When there is little contrast in colors, surfaces and objects more light is needed.

Direction Direction of light is vital, to avoid all shadow or all glare. Location, size and source of light are important here. Remember that the direction of lighting can correct awkward shapes, can create illusions of either space or coziness in any room.

For instance: indirect light reflected down from the ceiling raises the ceiling height, while all light coming down from the ceiling can have a gruesome effect. All indirect lighting in a room gives off very little shadow, therefore little contrast, and puts you to sleep.

Good, functional lighting consist of indirect lighting plus lamps, so that the whole room is softly lit, with brighter areas from lamps where specific activity goes on.

Ther are three basic elements of lighting to work with in planning effective lighting in your home. They are; focal glow, such as the pool of light a lamp casts around your favorite chair; general luminescence, an overall light (such as you would see in a theater before the show) which seems to emanate from nowhere. Pin-point brillance is the last type of light, and is recognizable as the spotlight directed on an actor on a darkened stage, or lighting up a specific object in display on a shelf or table.

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