Developing a Lighting Plan for Your Home

1 January 2017 | Graham

LIGHTING YOUR HOME NEEDS PLANNING!

To be able to make the most of your home the lighting needs to be as flexible and functional as the space you want to illuminate. Within your home the space where the children do their homework could also be the same space that you use to welcome and entertain your guests, so to make the most of the space for both functions the lighting has to be flexible. BEFORE you go out to buy your lights, or in fact order the online from us... you need to do a bit of planning.

Good light can make or break the ambience of a room.

The most efficient way to make the most of the space in your home is to put together a lighting plan. All the rooms need varied lighting, a good lighting plan will help you ensure that all the needs of the space are catered for, all rooms need three types of light.

Ambient or General Lighting, Task Lighting, Accent Lighting

These we discussed in our earlier blog post How to Make Light Work in Your Home

Now you need to think about the space, size, colour, light sources already there as well as what is it used for? by whom and when. Your lighting plan should take all these factors into account:

Questions to ask yourself:

What is the size of my room?
Colours, what colours am I going to have in the room?
Natural light sources, that's anywhere that allows daylight to come into the room, windows, skylights, doors.
How many natural light sources does the space have?
From which direction is the light coming from?
When is the time of day that provides the brightest / dullest light?
What will you use the room for? is it a space that will have more than one use?Eg. Will your kitchen only be used for cooking? or will you use it as an entertaining space, as a dining space or as a work space?
What time of the day will you be using the room?
Who will use the room, Just adults? family? is it only for entertaining? or is it a living space?
Do you know the layout of the furniture that you propose to put in the space?
Where do you want to put sockets and switches?
Do you have features you would like to highlight, where are they? - Do you have a piece of architecture, a picture that you want to highlight?

Having answered all of the checklist questions, now think about the type of lights that you want in your space.

Are the lights to be decorative or simply functional?
Should they follow a theme?
Where is your ambient light going to come from?

It could come from a central pendant light , a show stopping chandelier, a series of table lamps or a series of ceiling lights.

part 2 of this planning will follow .......

Tip: Don't try and do all of this at the same time, give yourself time to think about it, keep a pad and pen to hand over a few days, write down your thoughts and ideas.