To recap, decorative lighting is all about setting the mood and adding excitement to a space by highlighting different items, areas, and shapes. The majority of decorative lighting is for aesthetic reasons, but it still doubles as functional safety lighting. In other blog posts we’ve navigated the types of lighting, accent, task and ambient lighting. Decorative lighting is a supplement to essential lighting and is often used as a feature. It can also double as each of the categories stated above. Whichever lighting you choose to install it’s important to understand what role it plays within you space too many lights could become a nuisance, while too few and you have serious safety issues. We’ve created a quick checklist of applications for lighting in each room but keep in mind individual spaces vary, so you may need to adjust the type to your specific circumstance. Read the full checklist here.
Decorative lighting adds personality, vibrance and flair to your space. Tailoring your lighting design to your interior style often includes selecting colour palettes, cohesive shapes and specific textures to match your other interior fixtures. To ensure a cohesive and intuitive flow between rooms, customising your lighting is essential. There are a range of lighting controllers and technologies on the market that can help you achieve a consistent and stylised finish to your lighting without too much effort.
Here are our favourite lighting accessories:
Whether you choose to have sensored lights that illuminate your room when movement is detected, voice-activated technology or simply the ability to customise brightness and colour., the possibilities are endless and can transform your lighting design. Check out our full range of controllers and lighting options to stylise your home here.
Understanding your light’s purpose is essential to getting the correct placement. We recommend categorising you’re lighting into task, ambient and accent streams to determine what type of lighting you’ll need and where it is needed. Refer to our lighting checklist to ensure all your lighting essentials are met before installing additional lights. It’s apparent in our checklist but lighting in each room of your house will differ, if only slightly. The essentials remain the same, but the quantity and quality of light will change.
Here are some questions we use to determine the placement of our lights:
Once you’ve answered these questions and come to a conclusion about your lighting requirements, it’s time to finalise your lighting plan.
The most effective way to determine your lighting design is by working from the floor plan. If you do not have your floor plans, a rough sketch or using a program like Really Sketch works well to simply layout your room. Having your floor plan and understanding the function of each room means you will be able to consider the tasks performed in the space to provide functional and effective lighting. You can ensure each type of lighting – task, ambient and accent is met by laying out your design in a digestible form. This also means you can collaborate with your electrician or lighting team to have an easy guide and plan in place. Once your essential lighting has been implemented you can go ahead and add your decorative features to supplement your lighting and highlight your architecture. Finally, align your budget and style preferences by creating a mood board. From there you can select your lights and get started installing your perfectly planned lighting design. Planning your Lights can seem intimidating, but by breaking down the process it is easier to tackle and manage. We’ve simplified the process further by breaking down our step-by-step guide to planning your lighting design.