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Lighting your home room by room: Bedroom lighting

Posted by The Online Lighting Store on 8th Sep 2021

Lighting your home room by room: Bedroom lighting

Lighting your home isn’t a “one size fits all” deal.

Each individual room has its own colour, dimensions, and function.

These three things add up to create a room’s personality, and getting the lighting right is a huge part of what makes a room feel special.

The Bedroom

The bedroom is indeed a special room. It’s where we are at our most relaxed, our most vulnerable, and it’s the room we spend the most amount of our time in (albeit asleep).

It’s the room you start your morning off in, and it’s the sanctuary you return to after a long day, so making your bedroom a comfortable, warm, and safe place is essential for a happy home.

If you treat your bedroom as a necessity for sleep rather than somewhere you can decorate, enjoy, and relax, then you are doing yourself a disservice.

Ambient lighting

Bedrooms need a mix of ambient and task lighting, but getting the balance right can be difficult.

Ambient lighting is general lighting to help find your way about safely. Usually, the ceiling light does the job, but choosing the right fixture can make all the difference.

You don’t want your ambient light to be too bright – remember, this is where you try to fall asleep. Diffuse the light with an upwards lampshade, which will “spread” the light out across the ceiling.

This stops direct contact with your eyes and instead gives the room a soft glow while still lighting everything up.

It’s tempting to buy a dark, opaque lampshade to diffuse the light, but in reality this only creates a “spotlight” effect. A light-coloured shade will do a better job of diluting the light from a naked bulb.

Task lighting

Bedrooms, of course, aren’t just for sleeping. Task lighting is there to help us with the little things we do in the bedroom like put on makeup or read before hitting the pillow.

Bedside table lamps are the most popular type of task lighting, but again, a little bit of thought can make a world of difference.

They type of table lamp, how easy it is to turn off/on, and where it’s placed, are all important factors to consider.

If you read before bed, then a reading light is a better choice than a generic bedside lamp. It’s important to make sure the light isn’t too bright or shining in your eyes before bed, which is why reading lights are specifically designed that way.

Choosing the right bulb

An often-overlooked factor of lighting is the bulb.

Bulbs not only come in different levels of brightness (lumens) but different types, shapes, and colours.

For bedroom lighting, getting the colour right is important. This is because of our natural circadian rhythms which help us sleep.

Basically, as the sun sets, the warmer, softer light triggers the production of melatonin, which is a hormone that helps us sleep. It’s nature’s way of telling us it’s bedtime.

Bulbs that are more in the blue/white range interrupt the production of melatonin, and so should be avoided in the bedroom.

Make a house a home with our help

Obviously how you light a bedroom depends on many things, including the size of the room, what you use it for, and the décor, but there are some basic principles about bedroom lighting that are universal.

  • Keep lights warm, a colour temperature somewhere around 2,000 – 2,700K to help you sleep.
  • Don’t install lights directly over your bed or shining in your eyes.
  • The right light for the right job; a small table lamp for an enormous bedroom won’t work.

Their primary use is for sleeping, but that doesn’t mean bedrooms have to be dark all the time. Getting the lighting right can create a wonderful place you can relax before bed and wake up refreshed in the morning ready to tackle the day ahead.

If you would like more inspiration, tips, or advice on bedroom lighting, then please don’t hesitate to contact us here at the Online Lighting Store.

Our professional and experienced team will be happy to help in any way they can.