Resources for Better Lighting Design

Home Lighting Tips from the American Lighting Association
Having proper lightings at home is very important. If you are planning to remodel your house, consider following these lighting tips from the American Lighting Association. First, you should know the activities that will be done in each room. Is it for reading and writing, work, food preparation, or simply a place to rest? Does the area have dark wall colors? What are decorations in that room? For more specific tips, this page has articles for each room of the house. This includes the living room, bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, dining room, home office, home theater, and others. As a bonus tip, there is a separate article on how to choose the right ceiling fan.

Why Hire a Lighting Designer
Serious home decorators may want to look into hiring a light designer. This article on Decorating Studio gives information about what light designers do, why they are important to lighting décor, and how to hire a light designer. Lighting designers are suggested in order to evaluate your lighting budget, address maintenance issues, monitor lighting equipment installation and to utilize energy efficient lighting.

Lighting Sources and Suggestions
This site offers tips about light and color tips, as well as the four types of bulbs: incandescent, halogen, full-spectrum and fluorescent. Wall sconces, chandeliers and lamps are mentioned as lighting sources. Built-in lighting can be used to enhance artwork, and soft lighting and candlelight are also listed as decorative lighting sources. The article ends with information about how to use daylight to enhance a room, including which colors work with natural daylight.

Using Interior Lighting to Enhance Specific Rooms in Your Home
Courtesy of TheSpruce.com, you'll get the latest insight from popular home design and improvement retailers on using and placing interior lighting fixtures to enhance your bathroom, bedroom, kitchen and home office. Interior home lighting diagrams and plans accompany articles on how to bring more lighting into your home, how to install interior lighting fixtures, and how to use specialty lighting and lighting fixtures to add depth, drama and interest to a room. Past articles and resources include facts on buying ceiling fans and choosing the right light bulbs, along with creative ways for lighting awkward spaces like hallways and entryways. Details on what interior lighting is best for reading, for dressing tables, for closets and general bedroom lighting also has been featured, as well as the latest trends in kitchen lighting, including under cabinet lighting and halogen lighting.

Home Lighting Design Tips from Melanie Freundlich
Melanie Freundlich founded the Melanie Freundlich Lighting Design back in 1997. In this article, she answers some common questions on home lighting design. According to her, some people find it hard to choose the right lighting fixture because they focus on the fixture and not what it can do. She said that a living room should have a variety of lighting heights and locations, and that a bathroom should have lights on each side of the mirror and above it. Freundlich added that solar lights don’t seem to work very well. Besides recommending that all switches should be changed to dimmers, she gave some tips for the proper lighting in others parts of the house.

The Right Lighting, from P&G Everyday
This article on P&G Everyday by designer Kenneth Wingard provides some advice and tips and tricks for choosing the right home interior lighting, including information on types of light (ambient, accent, task and natural), and types of light fixtures: flush and semi-flush ceiling lights, pendant, wall sconces, recessed and track, and lamps: a large category that encompasses all moveable light fixtures, from loor lamps and table lamps, to torchieres and desk lamps. These usually provide accent and task lighting since they're usually not bright enough to light an entire room. The article also talks about how to put these light types and fixtures. A general rule is to make sure every room has at least three different sources of light. In a bedroom, for example, you might have a floor lamp, a dresser lamp, and two wall scones over the bed.