Designing rooms can be fun and one aspect I always want to get into is lighting. Whether you intend to style a room with Nora lighting, or go on a makeover spree all over the house, you may want to keep these tips in mind.
Nora Lighting for Living Rooms
The living room is where most people in the household share space. They make small conversations, entertain themselves with TV or board games. And here is where guests are usually made to rest while the hosts prepare. One thing that you have to keep in mind when designing the lighting for the living room is the concept of layering light. The reason why this is so much better compared to the recessed downlight can vary a bit from person to person however there is a grand acceptance of the fact. Personally, I like to have the lighting in my living room bounce off the ceiling rather than directly hitting me when my intention is to rest my eyes.
One of the ways that you can accomplish proper ambient lighting in the living room is to integrate valance lighting or cove lighting into the architecture of the room. By doing this, you should be able to bounce the light off the ceiling. Thus you can make the living room just truly lovely.
One concern that designers often face when working with living rooms is the often lacking fixtures in terms of dimension. Lest be mistaken for a bathroom partition, we should really pay attention to the way the book cases and counters. Should they not go all the way up the ceiling then may I suggest that you take advantage of the space above it. And what better to brighten up the room than adding actual bright lights. Even a linear fluorescent light should do the trick. Or, if you are feeling a bit fancy yourself, then you could go for a piece of millwork. If these lights are dimmable then all the better. You would not want to be stuck with the same lighting since the living room is after all, multifunctional.
Washing the walls with light is another great way to provide the living room with ambient lighting. Basically, you will have two choices which comes down to valance lighting or soffit lighting. Or, if you want to go the other way, you can use track lighting or recessed lighting. You have to direct these lights to the walls and watch the magic happen. There is a less common third option which is to simply use a plug-in floor lamp torchieres and simply face the translucent them upwards.
Task lighting is used on surfaces where we usually do our work, or on weekends, fun. Of course, the first thought you might have in mind, and rightly so, are table lamps. These are usually perfect for living room tables and they can be quite elegant too. One word of advice though is that they should be adjustable or, at least, easy to move around. You would not want your lamp to clog up space when you have guests over who want to use the entire floor for game night. If you are in a lump and just want other people to decide for you, then you shouldn’t go wrong with choosing an apothecary-style lamp. This reading lamp has variety as it can be incandescent or LED. It is one of my all time favorites and a lot of people agree with me on this one.
The magic of accent lighting really springs to light when you want a particular spot in the living room to be highlighted. If you bought a fancy new painting, then nothing can be more annoying than the guests focusing their attention on your old coffee table. This can easily be fixed by putting the highlight on using accent lighting. You have to be really careful however if you do indeed want to highlight art. If you get collector’s items like antique arts, then you might want to consider what heat, or indeed light, it can withstand. You don’t want to destroy your priceless collection simply because you want to show it off a bit more.
Nora Lighting for Kitchens
Why do we need better lighting for kitchens and what does that mean exactly. Well, the answer to the first question may vary from person to person, but I am inclined to give my personal opinion. I am a food junkie and everything that can be eaten, I will have firm attention to. This is of course as long as it is appetizing and what more can entice a person’s appetite than the sensory overload. The taste, of course, the smell, definitely, and last but not the least the sight, are the three main things that give food its allure. And since we are talking about lighting here. Let us see how far we can go to improve the lighting, this time in particular to our beloved kitchens.
There are two factors that have to be kept in mind when designing kitchen lighting, and indeed designing kitchens altogether. The first one is that it is a gathering spot. You would not want to slave alone in a kitchen and neither would you want to keep all the fun of preparing meals to yourself. This has a lot of implications that go beyond just lighting but lighting perhaps is also just as important as the rest. The second one you have to consider are the things that you need to do in the kitchen which is, mainly, to prepare food. Now, you know that you would be handling a lot of sharp and hot objects here. So, you might want to add sufficient lighting so we will not have any accidents.
Kitchen lighting design revolves mainly on the two factors mentioned above. There are plenty of ways you can work with these but most importantly you would probably want to also take note of tried and tested designs.
