Let there be light!

Have you ever considered the difference the right kind of lighting can make to your home? The right lighting can effortlessly set the mood apart from making a palpable difference to the way your home looks.

Nothing can, of course, beat natural lighting. A well-planned home should be built such that it gets the best light in all seasons. While you don’t want to build a house where you can’t escape the heat in the summers when you want to, you want to ensure that your house gets the most of the meagre winter sunshine. Now this might sound like it needs to be a conjurer’s trick but that’s not strictly necessary! To set off, matters are greatly helped by owning an east facing home which will ensure that you get sunlight for the maximum amount of time through the day. But since we can’t all have east-facing homes without making for a very lop-sided world the intention should be to allow as much light into the principal rooms as possible. Using light tapestries and furnishings will also go a long way towards the cause.

Natural light apart, there are three basic kinds of lighting a place needs – task lighting, accent lighting and general lighting.

Task lighting is basically functional and used in high concentration, perhaps for reading or being able to examine things clearly.

Accent lighting, like the name suggests is meant to highlight paintings, plants or other interesting things about interior design or landscaping and is basically decorative. That being said accent lighting rightly used can bring your home alive in a variety of ways. Just see the difference it makes over a painting or tucked artfully behind a plant.

General lighting or ambient lighting fills up the gap between the two and is used for the basically illuminating an area.

And playing with just these three basic kinds of lighting there are so many things you can do to revamp the feel of your home! From alcove lighting to recessed lighting or even a soffit lighting to accentuating the pattern on an interesting wall, there are innumerable options you can explore to achieve whatever effect you want!

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