Whole House Lighting Plan
Whole House Lighting Plan
The importance of a whole house lighting plan is not to be understated. The right lighting can make all the difference — in photography, on a first date and especially in interior design. Lighting sets the mood, creates depth and improves safety.
In addition to affecting your mood and emotions, the incorrect color temperature can really affect the colors you see in your interiors. Once you’ve experienced a home with an exceptionally executed lighting plan, there’s no un-seeing the difference that it makes.
Lighting is the kind of detail that seems basic at first, but the more a client thinks about it, the more they realize they have some very strong feelings about it. From types of fixtures to LEDs and color temperature, people have definite opinions about lighting.
Hanging pendant detail in this West Village home.
The Science Behind Lighting
This recent New York Times article which gives great insight into how light affects your sleep, calls to mind a conversation we had with award-winning digital home expert Richard Hollander where he spoke a bit about color rendering index (CRI) and how that affects your circadian rhythm. We all look forward to getting a good night’s sleep, so it makes sense to invest in a lighting plan that will support those efforts.
We prefer the most natural looking light in a home; they help keep your circadian rhythm on schedule and put your home in the best light at the same time. Richard recommended smart bulbs, like those available from Philips Hue which can be adjusted for color, and controlled with your smartphone and devices. Philips Hue allows users to select from a number of different presets — like Read, Energize, Relax and Nightlight — that will help to set the desired mood.
If you’re working with an AV team, you may want to consider architectural lighting from Lutron-owned Ketra. According to their website, Ketra lights mimic natural sunlight “by shifting in color temperature and intensity throughout the day, [seamlessly emulating] sunlight so people feel more connected to the outdoors.”
Pools of Light and Layers
If you’ve ever wished there was more light in one of the rooms of your home, it’s likely that the solution to your problems isn’t a brighter bulb, it’s layering. Even the smallest living space needs more than a single ceiling fixture in order to be well-lit, let alone create any kind of ambiance.
We like to have pools of light throughout the different rooms of a home. This approach ensures that each part of the space is lit. In bedrooms and living areas this might mean a floor or table lamp for reading in addition to overhead lighting and sconces.
We also like lights at different height levels to create different moods. Nowhere is this more fun than in the kitchen. We look at every level and surface to explore the different opportunities to add lighting. There’s under-cabinet lighting, toe-kick lighting, and — if we’re feeling fancy — integrated lighting for shelves, cabinets and drawers.
As we say in our Kitchen Design Trends 2022 post, “give us an afternoon with our electrician and you’ll be amazed at what we can accomplish — you may never turn on an overhead light again!” We are constantly educating ourselves on new and improved ways to harness the power of light in interior design.
Layers of light in this West Village home.
A Note About Sconces
While we won’t spend a great deal of time on the many different types of light fixtures available on the market today, this post just wouldn’t feel complete if we didn’t profess our love for sconces.
Sconces are the unsung hero of the lighting world. We use them everywhere. In bedrooms they do double duty, freeing up valuable real estate on nightstands. In entryways they add a sense of excitement as you walk into the home. In bathrooms they add softness by bringing light in at a lower, more flattering level. We even use sconces above art pieces to draw attention and add a little pop of light to the space.
When you think a space is finished, we encourage you to look at it once more and say, but could we add a sconce?
Minimal yet bold sconce in this Quogue home.
We hope we’ve helped to shine a light on the importance of having a comprehensive whole house lighting plan. If you’re interested in more of our bright ideas, we invite you to reach out and schedule a consultation.
Click here to see the many ways we layered lighting in our Millington project or here to admire the under-shelf lighting we incorporated into the drybar niche in our Bernardsville project.
