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Of the many different types of home lighting there is to be incorporated, mood lighting is one of the most easily overlooked. Quality atmospheric lighting makes your home feel more comfortable and inviting. Here, we’ll discuss mood and ambient lighting and how it can benefit you.
What is Mood Lighting?
Mood lighting is intentional atmospheric room lighting designed to evoke a certain emotion or influence the mood. Ambient lights allow you to create a cozy, intimate setting that is perfect for relaxing at night.
Creating mood lighting often involves adjustable lights, such as dimmable lights and warmer colour temperatures. It also involves strategic placement of the light fixtures to shine light in certain places and cast shadows in others.
Often, mood lighting and accent lighting are one and the same. Accent lights, such as wall lights, are used to highlight certain features in a room. This includes sculptures, unique architectural elements and other areas of interest. Accent lighting is just one of three lighting layers in a room and should be considered when creating mood lighting.
What is Layered Lighting, And How Do You Use it For Home Mood Lighting?
Layered lighting is a lighting technique that involves three different lighting layers combined together. Ambient lights, task lights and accent lights work in harmony to create a layered lighting scheme. Layered lighting ensures that the entire room is well-lit and that there are no accidental shadows.
Ambient lights are the main source of light in a room. They tend to come from pendant lighting or other ceiling lights, such as recessed fixtures. This main light source is then supplemented by the other layers.
Dining room mood lighting is usually accomplished with ambient lighting sources. Dimmable pendant lights are an especially popular choice for creating a comfortable and romantic dining experience.
The second layer of a layered lighting scheme is task lighting. The benefits of task lighting are many, as they allow you to easily see while performing various activities. Task lights look different in different rooms of the house, such as countertop lights in a kitchen or desk lighting in an office.
In their own way, task lights can also be used as mood lighting. Take bedroom mood lighting, for example. Using bedside reading lights as the only light source can create an intimate atmosphere.
Finally, there is accent lighting. Accent lighting, or mood lighting, is usually created using wall lighting. As mentioned, accent lighting draws attention to certain areas of the room that you want to stick out. Since this lighting style is indirect, it can also serve as mood lighting.
Modern lighting trends are capable of doubling as mood lighting quite effectively. Consider kitchen mood lighting such as kick plate lights. When you leave only these plinth lights turned on in a kitchen, they create a soft, atmospheric glow.
How Can Lighting Affect Your Mood, And What Are The Benefits of Good Lighting?
Mental wellness and lighting are sometimes directly connected. Lighting plays a role in influencing your overall state of mind, both at work and at home.
Commercial offices have even started taking note of this and are paying closer attention
to the effects ambient lighting has on their employees. Brighter, natural looking light is known to energize and invigorate, making employees more productive on the job.
When it comes to home lighting ideas, however, warmer lights help create a more relaxing state of mind. It is even said that lighting types can influence one’s appetite, making it particularly important in dining areas. Brighter dining spaces tend to make people eat faster, while dimmer lighting will slow down eating and help you appreciate each bite more.
At its most basic, light can also influence your circadian rhythm. This bodily process uses light cues to release certain chemicals in the brain, such as melatonin, which helps your body recognize when it is time to go to sleep. Having quality lighting that you can adjust to the time of day may help balance your circadian rhythm and result in better sleep.
How To Create Atmospheric Mood Lighting in Different Areas of the HomeÂ
Atmospheric lighting can be incorporated into nearly every room of the house. Here, we’ll take a look at some mood lighting techniques for your home.
Mood Lighting for Living RoomsÂ
One of the best things you can do for mood lighting in a living room is to incorporate all layers of lighting. Adding task lights such as reading lamps, overhead lights or desk lamps offer ample illumination for performing tasks and beautiful mood lighting the rest of the time.
As for accent lights, you can simply turn off any other task or ambient lighting and use the indirect light source as mood lights. Since fixtures such as track lights, spotlights, and backlights don’t affect the room’s overall brightness in any significant way, they are perfect for mood lighting when used on their own.
Ambient lighting can provide mood lighting as well. By using wall lights, floor lamps or dimmable overhead lights, their ambient light can cast a soft glow across the entire room.
You should also use warm lights to create mood lighting in the living room. These are gentler on the eyes and promote a better feeling of calm and relaxation as opposed to brighter, cooler lights. By spreading warm light along the walls by way of wall washing lights, you can make the room bright enough to see while still making it moody and atmospheric.
Mood Lighting for Dining Rooms
Careful use of LED indoor lights in the dining room can transform it into an atmospheric space that is perfect for intimate dining. Since dining rooms are most commonly used at night, you have the perfect opportunity to make the space dramatic and moody.
One way to do this is to centre your lighting around the table. This will put a focus on the dining table itself and allow the rest of the room to recede into dimness, perfect for entertaining guests or having a romantic dinner. This sort of mood lighting changes the entire feel of the room just by using dim lighting in a single place.
No matter how you style the room’s lighting, it is important that you use dim, warm lighting. This type of lighting can mimic the light given off by candlelight, which automatically makes the space more romantic.
Mood Lighting for Kitchens
The kitchen is one of the most-used rooms in the house. Whether this is for cooking, meal prep or entertainment, it sees a lot of traffic and should be lit with that in mind.
While most may think kitchen light fixtures should only serve the purpose of task lighting, there are many ways to make it moody and atmospheric as well.
One of the easiest ways to do this is to incorporate kickboard lighting. Also known as plinth lighting, kickboard lighting lines the base of kitchen islands and cabinets. Plinth lighting shines a soft, warm glow on the floor below it, and when it is used on its own or with a dim lamp, it creates excellent mood lighting.
Pendant lights above the island also work well as mood lighting. If they are set on dimmer switches, you can turn them on and nothing else to create a moody environment for entertaining. Low hanging pendant lights are especially good at this, as they create a more intimate environment by keeping the light low and localized.
Mood Lighting for BedroomsÂ
The bedroom is a prime location for mood lighting. Since time spent in this room is meant to be relaxing and calming above all else, atmospheric lighting is especially important.
You can get creative with your mood lighting in a bedroom by adding string lights around the ceiling. String or strip lights will light the perimeter and cast a soft glow from above.
Bedside reading lights can also be used as mood lighting. This style of task lighting casts a dedicated beam of light, which is perfect for reading in bed. When they are the only lights turned on, they also make for excellent mood lighting.
Installing lights under the bed is another great way to add mood lighting. The strip lights beneath the bed will shine an indirect light from below, creating a mysterious and romantic look.
Of course, floor and desk lamps are another great choice for bedroom lighting. This style of task light can be turned into mood lighting when they are the only ones switched on.
Do’s and Don’ts When Planning Mood Lighting in the Home
Check out these tips on how to get LED lighting right:
DO:Â
- DO use LED room lights. Energy efficient lighting options such as LED bulbs are the perfect choice for lighting of all kinds, especially mood lighting. Since LED lights come in a variety of lumen counts and colour temperatures, you can get specific with the lighting level and tone of a room.
- DO layer the lights. By layering the lighting, you’ll have plenty of options for individual lights to turn on and off in order to create mood lighting.
- DO use dimmers. Using LED light bulbs on dimmer switches, you stay in control of the light level at any given time. This will help you create mood lighting throughout the day and especially at night when you need gentle, soft and atmospheric lighting.
- DO create focal points. Using accent lighting on your favorite elements in a room will also double as mood lighting. You can simultaneously draw attention to your favourite areas in a room while casting an indirect and moody glow across the space at the same time.
DON’T:Â
- DON’T overlight the space. If you want to accomplish mood lighting, you need to be particular with the lights you incorporate. If the room is too saturated with illumination, it won’t provide the kind of atmosphere you’re after.
- DON’T use cool lights. Cool lights are energizing and best for times when you need to focus. If you want to relax in a cozy environment, opt for warmer colour temperatures.
- DON’T stick to overhead lights alone. Overhead ambient lighting by itself may not be enough to provide you with the soft atmospheric lighting you want. Install dimmable overhead ambient lighting but also add some lamps and sconces that you can turn on instead when you like.
How To Use Smart Lighting for Your Home Lighting Scheme
Smart lighting solutions are a great way to ensure you get the best out of your lighting design. Smart lighting refers to lights that can be incorporated into a smart home system or controlled by a smart service from your cell phone.
With smart lighting, you can take control of the colour and brightness of a bulb from a distance, turn lights on and off with hands-free control and other convenient methods beneficial for creating mood lighting. The custom lighting control afforded by smart lighting can be a game changer as far as your lighting scheme is concerned.
By using smart lighting to set the dimmer setting, you can create beautiful mood lighting at a moment’s notice. You can also set your lights on a timer that will turn the illumination on when the sun goes down, immediately bringing mood lighting to a space with no effort on your part.
How To Keep Your Ambient Lighting Scheme Energy Efficient
Energy efficient lighting is an important element for homeowners looking to reduce their carbon footprint. When it comes to ambient lighting that you will use more frequently than others, you can lessen your environmental impact using LED bulbs.
With energy efficient LED bulbs, you can lower the amount of energy that is consumed to generate illumination. This is made possible due to the fact that LED lights use 80 percent less energy than halogen bulbs, which puts less of a strain on your electrical system. It is also a more environmentally friendly option, so you can feel good about your contributions to a healthier planet all while lighting your home.
Atmospheric Lighting Fixture Ideas
Perfect for use as indirect lighting or for drawing attention to artwork, the LWA427 3 Watt Wall Washer Interior Wall Light is a beautiful wall light with diverse applications. The light has a modern half-cylinder shape that faces upward, shining illumination up and onto the wall. The 3000k warm white light fans out on the wall, giving it an artistic look. It outputs 300 lumens of light and is available in white or black finishes.
Creating soft and indirect light with the LWA228 4 Watt LED Round Interior Wall Light is simple. With only 400 lumens, it offers a nice glow of 3200k warm white light. An acrylic diffuser behind the faceplate shines light in a ring around it, making it subtle. It is available in white or black finishes to suit the appearance of your space.
With the LDC723 6 Watt 600 Lumen Recessed Anti Glare LED Downlight, you can create a unique pool of light that is perfect for mood lighting. The three deeply recessed bulbs in this downlight not only eliminate glare but also shine a soft light from seemingly out of nowhere onto the surface below it. The modern recessed light fixture outputs 3000k warm white light and shines a total of 600 lumens.
The LPL367 15 Watt Triple Hexagonal LED Pendant Light makes a great choice for focal points over kitchen islands and counters with its unique honeycomb appearance. The fixture outputs 1200 lumens of light, making it bright enough to see to perform tasks without being overwhelming. At the same time, it emits a 3000k warm white colour temperature that is still gentle on the eyes, welcoming and inviting.
The LBL712 9 Watt Surface Mounted Anti Glare LED Downlight is a unique light with three recessed bulbs that prevent glare when you look at the fixture. At the same time, it creates a moody pool of light that shines down onto the surface beneath it, making it ideal for atmospheric lighting. This one of a kind light outputs 360 lumens of 3000k warm white light and comes in either black or white finishes.
