The importance of lighting in interior design

Lighting changes a room more than almost any other decision, and it is the one most often left until last. Colour temperature and brightness are the two variables, and getting the balance between them right is most of the work.

There are three types of lighting used in interior design:

General lighting, also called ambient lighting, is what you normally find in a home or a hotel room. Up-lights and down-lights fill the space and set the warmth of it.

Task lighting is used in offices and workspaces. It runs two to three times brighter than the general lighting around it, so you can read or work under it.

Accent lighting picks out the architecture: a cornice, an alcove, a piece of stonework. Halogen is traditionally used for it because of the intensity of the beam.

When the lighting in a room is wrong, you notice immediately even if you cannot say why. A well-proportioned room with badly planned lighting never reads as well as it should.

When designing a space, it is essential to define the experience that we want to create. Dim and indirect lighting will create a more intimate space that encourages relaxation, while white and direct lighting activates our brains and allows us to see smaller details. One should always choose the type of light depending on the design scheme and true to the rooms features. So the lighting has to be decided alongside the scheme rather than after it.

For example. Using a warm light temperature for common areas. Mixing direct light with indirect light to create difference ambiences, and using LED strips in wardrobes and for floor light and staircases. It is a technical discipline, and it is worth having somebody plan it properly.

Several light sources, with no dark corners left unlit, will open up a room that feels cramped under a single ceiling fitting.

Pushing light in a particular direction creates shadow and highlight, which is how you show the parts of a room that would otherwise go unnoticed.

The fitting itself can be purely technical, designed to do a job and disappear, or it can be decorative. Interior designers tend to use both in the same room. A shaded pendant, a chandelier, a sculptural lamp or a backlit mirror all change the ambience and act as a design feature at the same time.

Then there is daylight, which no artificial source replicates. Always plan a room around the daylight it gets first, and light the rest around that.

Our in-house interior designers set the lighting layout before first fix, because that is when the wiring has to be right. Tell us about the rooms, or read what our electrical team covers.