There are 8 Mistakes When Lighting Your Home

Home lighting has a strong impact on both those living in and visiting the house. Setting them up correctly isn’t as straightforward as you might expect.

People often make mistakes when lighting their homes: today, we’ll be looking at eight of them. Once you’ve read through all eight of these common home lighting mistakes, you can determine which ones are true of your home and fix them.

Read on if you would like to know some of the mistakes you might have made when lighting your home!

1. Dim Kitchen Lights

The kitchen should be the brightest room in your house. Anyone who has cooked in a dimly lit kitchen before will know how difficult and dangerous it is. One wrong move and you’ve spilled a dish of spaghetti or even set the kitchen on fire!

Your kitchen should have strong lights over all important surfaces. You should have one above or near to your stove, countertops, and anywhere else that you plan on using sharp or flammable objects. Without this bright lighting, you run the risk of causing an accident in your kitchen.

2. Using a Single Light in Smaller Rooms

There are a number of problems when using a single light, even in a small room. When you use just one light, the projected lighting throughout the room isn’t balanced. For example, if you have a single hanging lamp in the center of the room, any bookcases, shelves, or other surfaces will be well-lit from the top.

However, underneath all of these surfaces and the sides opposite the hanging lamp, there will be shadows and poorly lit areas. These areas will depreciate the ambiance of the room. It is best to have several lights set up in such a way that shadows and dim spots are minimized.

3. Failing to Light Up Desktops

If you have a work desk, one of the biggest mistakes you can make is not lighting it up properly. Not only will your desk look bad under poor light, but your eyes will also be negatively affected. Reading or writing in poor lighting is terrible for your eyesight and will likely result in frequent headaches and possible damage to your sight.

At the very least, you should have a small desk lamp next to you as you work. This will help light up whatever you’re reading and looks great on a desk too.

4. Using Floor Lamps in a Crowded Room

Obviously, rooms don’t have unlimited space. Crowded rooms tend to require table lamps or hanging lamps, depending on the shape and style of that room.

Using a floor lamp will only cause the room to feel more cramped. Every room needs a certain amount of free space so that those staying inside it don’t feel claustrophobic. Make sure you take this into account when you set up rooms without much free space.

5. Neglecting Your Outdoor Lighting

Don’t forget about the outdoor world: If you don’t light up the outside of your home very well, it will cause a major security hazard as well as leave your home looking quite uninviting at nighttime.

Make sure that your entire outdoor land has enough lighting to let you see everything. However, your lights shouldn’t overwhelm you or anyone else looking out at them. The idea is that you can see enough to be safe, but not shine your outdoor lights so brightly that it impacts your neighbours.

6. Not Varying Your Light Types

It’s never a good idea to use all the same types of lights throughout your house. Every room has unique needs. For example, you wouldn’t use the same floor lamp that you use in your living room in a bathroom, would you? Bathrooms tend to require ceiling lights or occasionally bright hanging lamps.

You shouldn’t choose all the same lights simply because they’re cheap or convenient. Every room needs to be set up in such a way that it almost appears like you’ve used designer lighting – unless you have already, in which case your lighting should look fantastic!

7. Choosing Looks Over Practicality

Certain lights may look great in your home but appearances aren’t everything. When it comes to the lighting in your home, the temperature, brightness, and color of your lights are most important.

Of course, you shouldn’t use ugly-looking lights either. However, the wattage provided by a slightly less perfect-looking light may cause your entire room to look better. What would you say is more important: the way your lights look or the way the whole room looks? Of course, the entire room is more important and choosing the correct lighting is the way to ensure that goal is reached.

8. Not Considering the Comfort of Guests

The worst mistake you can make is not thinking about people who are coming to visit. You should have inviting lighting at the entrance of your house – the living room lighting should also have a similar effect. If you have a walkway up to your front door, make sure it has welcoming lamps on either side for nighttime’s sake. This way, if your guests come late at night, they won’t have any trouble getting to your house.

You should also put wall lamps in the hallway of your home. On top of that, make sure you have an overhead lamp above your dining table.

All of these lighting styles are important for keeping your guests happy and feeling at home. If you fail to do so or make your lighting too bright, your guests may not want to come back next time! You may not realize how effective good lighting is on keeping guests happy.

So, whether you buy your lights in person or you buy lamps online, make sure you consider all of these potential mistakes before doing so. If you can avoid all of these mistakes, you may just find yourself with a perfectly lit home!