How to light up your living room
The living room represents the fulcrum of the house: it is the environment intended for most of the daily activities such as relaxing after work, watching TV, reading a good book or chatting with guests.
Precisely because of its highly versatile nature, the living room must make the character of the entire home shine through to the fullest, which is why impeccable living room lighting will make it possible to make the most of it.
The lighting of the living room is often entrusted to a single chandelier for the living room positioned in the center of the room: the latter illuminates with a diffused light, more or less warm depending on the type of bulb chosen, but alone it is often insufficient to provide adequate light to the entire room.
But fear not, in this article you will discover various ideas on how to best illuminate a living room, enhancing the interior design of your home and leaving your guests ecstatic.
Where to place the lights to illuminate the sofa
We are often asked which devices can I use to light up the sofa area?
The answer is, of course, that it depends on the type of sofa (size, shape, location in the living room, etc.) and therefore every home has its own particular needs.
In principle, we can say that to illuminate above the sofa, the general ambient lighting given by a chandelier or ceiling light will be used.
But not only that, to better illuminate the living area, it will be equally important to have task lighting that will be carried out there, such as reading or working on the computer, for example.
Therefore, assuming that your living room has a sofa facing a coffee table and two single armchairs, two floor lamps should be placed on each side of the sofa, and a abat jour on the table between the two armchairs.
The abat jours for the living room especially, manage to create a perfect reading corner near an armchair or a sofa, or alternatively manage to highlight a wall with paintings and design objects.
Another cool tip I can give you is to make sure that matching fixtures like table lamps and floor lamps reach roughly the same height.
Modern living room lighting
New ideas for lighting a modern living room are born every day, but nowadays the idea of combining the classic fixed light with different lighting points is increasingly widespread, each of which is used for a specific function.
In dealing withmodern lighting, the watchword is essentiality, so after creating the focal point with a splendid chandelier or with a precious suspension, you can enrich the rest of the room by using some ambient lighting for your living room and the best options include recessed can lights, semi-recessed or a pendant light surrounded by onecove lights that can avoid annoying shaded areas.
Make sure these light sources are dimmable so you can dim the overall lighting in your room, particularly if you plan on watching TV.
As an task light, table lamps, or a floor lamp with a traditional shade, are a good choice.
Finally, as accent lighting, LED strips lights are indicated in your bookcases or sconces or track spotlights to accentuate the focal point of your room, like a beautiful painting.
Illuminate the living area: 4 useful tips
And here are 4 useful tips for not making a mistake when setting the lighting in the living room, whether it has a modern style, rather than mid-century modern or classic, these tips will certainly help you.
1) Don’t limit yourself to a single light point
The arrangement of the light points is essential and must be studied in detail to create a balanced and welcoming environment.
First of all, dark or shaded corners must be avoided in a certain part of the living room, this could easily happen in larger rooms such as open space living rooms.
Then it is important that every living room has a variety of light points, which means that there doesn’t have to be a single chandelier or ceiling light in the center of the room, but this must first of all be accompanied by light sources for activities such as reading or watching a film, such as floor lamps and lampshades for the living room, and finally from accent light sources such as recessed or semi-recessed can lights, track lighting and LED strips lightswhich can enhance various focal points of your living room.
Starting with a good lighting scheme means providing visual interest to the inhabitants of the house, but also to guests who will surely be impressed by your well-defined scheme, and this can never be achieved with a single device.
2) Accentuate your living room focal point with lighting
As you know, all rooms need a focal point. It provides balance to the room and gives it ‘character’, it is a function of great interior design, so the bottom line is that all well designed rooms should have one.
Natural focal points often include a fireplace, a picture window, a beautiful painting, a large piece of furniture, an impressive Murano chandelier, but also a unique wall or ceiling treatment, etc.
The easiest way to highlight him is to dedicate an exclusive accent lighting to him.
Such as, for example, placing the recessed can lights on the ceiling, using track lighting or in the case of a large fireplace, the use of two appliques on its sides is particularly appreciated or two plants where you can then place floor uplights, to create formal symmetry with the lighting in the living room.
3) Calculate carefully where to place the lights
To understand how to arrange the lights in the living room it is important to evaluate the size of the room: in smaller rooms it is sufficient to opt for a single chandelier associated with a table lamp, while in a large room or in an open space it is important to highlight the different corners with various bright spots.
Here is some data that will help you correctly position your light sources
- Chandelier – the bottom should be no lower than 7 feet (2.13 m) from the finished floor if you need to walk underneath it. You can go lower if the chandelier is hanging completely over a coffee table.
- Wall Sconces – hang them so that the center of the sconce is 66 to 72 inches (167 – 183 cm) from the finished floor, or 15 – 18 inches (38.1 – 45.72 cm) above a mantel. Furthermore, if you are hanging them on the sides of a mirror or a work of art for example, I would choose an applique size of about a third of the height of your mirror or in any case no greater than 50% of the latter.
- Track Lighting – mount the fixture 2 to 3 feet (0.61 – 0.91 meters) away from the wall in rooms that have ceilings up to 9 feet (2.74 meters). For ceilings between 9 and 11 feet high (2.74 – 3.35 meters), you will typically want to install the fixture 3 to 4 feet (0.91 – 1.2 meters) from the wall.
- Abat jour – Table Lamps: Place the top of the lampshade about 147-163cm off the floor, this will make the lampshade sit at eye level, which is perfect.
- Floor lamps: most have a height between 147-163 cm, so if your table lamps reach about the same height, a luminous horizontal line will be created from the lampshade, which will cross the whole room, with a great scenic effect.
- Wall washers: mount them 2 to 3 feet (0.61 meters) away from the wall in rooms that have ceilings up to 9 feet (2.74 meters). For ceilings between 9 and 11 feet high (2.74 – 3.35 meters), you will typically want to install the fixture 3 to 4 feet (0.91 – 1.2 meters) from the wall.
- Directional Recessed Can Lights: Aim to have a 30 degree angle on the fixture to the artwork for optimal lighting.
These precautions will surely help you in positioning your lights in the best possible way, always being careful to position them in the living room, avoiding that the light can dazzle your eyes, thus preventing you from carrying out the most relaxing activities.
4) Use a neutral and dimmable light
For the living room of a house I would choose LED bulbs between 2700 and 3000 K, which is quite a warm light and is better for traditional or mid century modern houses.
Conversely, for a contemporary, Scandinavian or similar style, a cooler light with a range around 4000 K is often preferable.
However, if you don’t already have one, I’d install a dimmer so you can dim or brighten the overall ambient light at will.
Furthermore, the beauty of the dimmer is that, using smart bulbs, you can choose to have multiple devices connected to the same switch and therefore to the same dimmer.
How cool is it when you can dim the chandelier and table lamps at the same time?
Examples of living room lighting
Finally, here are two examples of how to illuminate a living room thanks to the use of various light sources, thus highlighting the furniture while avoiding annoying shaded areas.
Modern living room lighting of 35 square meters with a height of 3.5 meters: lighting scheme consisting of an 8-light Murano chandelier with lampshades, surrounded by cove lighting to ensure ambient lighting, also enhanced by the natural light that enters from the glass wall.
Task lighting offered by an abat jour for the living room with lampshade combined with the chandelier, and to complete as a type of accent light three recessed can lights were used to enhance the painting placed above the sofa and the wall behind it.
Open space living room lighting, consisting of living room and kitchen, of 50 square meters with a height of 3.3 meters: lighting scheme consisting of acove lights, where within its range have been hung a chandelier in the center of the living room and a pendant lamp in the center of the table in the kitchen, which allows us to obtain direct lighting and with well-defined shadows to bring out everything around and on the table.
In the corner of the living room between the two sofas a floor lamp has been placed, in this way we are able to have a diffused or spot light, right where it is needed, while adding a touch of class to the whole room, and a table lamp on the cabinet near the sofa.
Through the use of two lateral sconces, we have highlighted a large valuable painting that is located on the side of the kitchen table.
The lighting scheme ends with a floor uplight placed behind the plant near the television, and with the use of four recessed can lights placed on the kitchen unit to illuminate the stovetop.
Conclusions
As you will have understood, in order to illuminate the living room correctly, you must take into consideration some basic rules, which, associated with your personal taste, will allow you to obtain the lighting of your dreams.
Cristalleria Murano ® makes its team of lighting designers available free of charge, with the aim of offering you the type of lighting that fits perfectly into your living room. Send us a photo of your living room via whatsapp on +39 3387078902, and we will reply with the best solution for you !!
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