As many of you will know, we bought a doer-upper of a house two years ago and have been refurbishing and decorating everything from scratch. What we have learned that no matter how amazing the décor, it all falls by the wayside if the lighting is wrong.
Get The Lighting Right
Getting the lighting right in a room basically seals the deal. You can have all the best accessories and home furnishings and the hippest paint colours imaginable, but it’s lipstick on a pig without great lighting.
Good lighting not only makes things look better but it also makes you feel better. A bright sunny day in the summer with many hours of daylight is more conducive to a good mood than a dark, glum, short day in December where it barely gets light all day. Darkness and light are used as metaphors in most languages. Think of a dark mood, light-hearted, hard labour …..
Light or Dark?
Dark is more often associated with bad and evil whereas light symbolises goodness and peace. There’s the light side and then there’s the dark side. And let’s be fair we all know which side is the best to be on. I’m kind of digressing, but I just wanted to make the point that generally we feel better with an element of lighting. I suffer from chronic pain and when things are really bad, it’s impossible to go to bed and sleep. Pain in the dark at night feels way worse than suffering pain by daylight. I’ll make migraines an exception to that rule!
My Dad was a SAD sufferer. Seasonal Affective Disorder really is a ‘thing’! He was so much happier in the Summer when he could get out in the garden. Come the short, dark days of January and February, he was a different person. Miserable doesn’t even begin to describe him! He really found it hard to see light at the end of the tunnel (excuse the obvious light metaphor there!) . My Mum even bought him one of those light boxes to try and improve his mood. She claims the change in him was tangible ….
This has all been a very roundabout way of saying ‘Get the lighting right in a room and you’re more than halfway there to creating a pleasant environment.
Choose LED Lighting
We have ceiling lights in every room yet the ones we use in most rooms are the incidental lights. The LED under cabinet lighting in the kitchen gives a lovely relaxing glow in which to chat. The fairy lights strung across the garden add a happy vibe to an evening barbecue. And our dimmable LED bedside lights create just-right ambient lighting for a bedroom.
So yes, get the lighting right and the rest will follow……
