Lighting is an essential element when you are decorating a room. However, few people understand their importance. The right lighting can promote conversation, offer a sense of relaxation and lift your mood.
In your living room, you should have a mixture of ambient, task and accent lightings.
So, how bright should a living room be?
Ambient lighting must be 1500-3000 lumens while task lighting a minimum of 400 lumens is required. If you want to know how these lights a distributed keep reading to understand them yourself.
The Concepts of Lighting In Your Living Room
As I mentioned before, the mix of environment, tasks and ceiling will make your room brighter, so let’s start using its best practices.
Ambient Lighting-
A living room is a very versatile space as such, it has many functions these include watching television, reading, entertaining visitors, or a quiet place to sit with your tablet and phone.
Hence, if you are using your living room as a movie theatre then, a dim the ceiling lights are always your best option for illumination. To avoid too many lights in your eyes and the glare from the television.
For reading, general lighting is needed so, don’t be afraid to add floor, table lamps and ceiling lights. Also, ensure that they are dimmable as too bright lights can hurt your eyes.
Task Lighting-
For task lighting, not much lighting is required. A table lamp positioned behind your seat can be useful when placing your remote control on your table, but they likely won’t be used once the TV is on.
When it comes to reading in your living room, table, and floor lamps are vital to the reader. Therefore, make sure that the light flashes on your book and is adjustable.
Accent Lighting
Accent lighting is perfect for emphasizing on designs such as art and architecture. It is best to keep the lumens low and consider portable fixtures to illuminate your living room.
The Best Bulbs For Your Living Room
A light bulb determines the look and feel of the living room. If you don’t have a bright bulb, then your space will not have enough lighting.
- Incandescent: These are traditional light bulbs that most people have been using. In order to support more energy-saving alternative light bulbs, they are beginning to phase out. They emit a light that is warm, glowing.
- Compact florescent bulbs: These bulbs have a longer life than traditional bulbs, have a longer lifespan, emit cool colors, and you can find them in various brightness and temperature ranges. Also, CFLs do contain mercury, but the amounts are small, so be careful handling and disposing of the bulb.
- LEDs: These are just as good as CFLs and can last up to three times longer than they do. LED lighting is used for task lighting, as they only produced a strong, clear light, but is better than CFLs. Their appearance is similar to incandescent, but they’re robust, cooler to the touch, and long-lasting.
- Halogen: They produce light similar to incandescent lamps and consume less energy than incandescent lamps.
The ambient lighting in the living room should be 1000-1500 lumens, and the task lighting should be 400 lumens. In addition, choose the best light bulb to make your living room bright.
