The kitchen is a place in your home where not only you work, but you also spend time in there entertaining, relaxing and spending time with your family. Many times, you will find that your kitchen is the hubbub of your home and you may spend more time in here than other rooms in your house. For this reason, the right kitchen lighting is very important. When you build a house or renovate your kitchen, you want to get recommendations from the pros to find out which type of lighting will work best. Here are a few tips for getting the right kind of kitchen lighting in your home.
A Bright Idea: Picking Kitchen Lights
While there are many different types of lighting that you can buy for your home, there are generally two types that will be used in your kitchen. Those two include functional lighting, such as those used when working or cooking and decorative lighting that is used to set the mood or to add a decorative touch to the home. When you talk about functional lighting, a kitchen will usually have fluorescent lighting or recessed lighting. Over the stove lighting are also quite common. You may even like the look of soft lighting that goes underneath cabinets. If you are lucky enough to have windows in your home, then natural lighting can also be used during the daytime. All of these types of lights in your kitchen are popular and when you go to pick kitchen lights, these are all options you will consider.
Shopping and Installing Your Kitchen Lights
Now that you know what type of lights you can choose from, you will certainly want to shop carefully for your lights. Before you buy, you will want to make a detailed plan and decide exactly where the lights will be placed. Placement is very important so that you can see when you are spending time in the kitchen. As you shop, think about how that particular light will look with your décor and in your home. Look at the prices and decide on whether or not this is a project you can complete on your own. If not, then you may have to hire a professional. In addition, replacing old and outdated lighting in your kitchen is one thing, but adding new lights will certainly require electrical skills that you may or may not have. Keep this in mind as your plan and shop for your new lighting.
Of course, shopping for your new lighting is part of the fun of updating your kitchen. You have many unique options for lighting in your kitchen. Don’t stop at your local home improvement store. Check out what you can buy at specialty lighting stores and through the Internet. You might be surprised to learn that you can find fixtures that you never even considered. The lighting that you choose will be as unique as you. Find something that is both functional and decorative and you will enjoy your hard work for years to come.
By: Jack S. Blacksmith
Posts Tagged ‘Natural Lighting’
Tips for Great Kitchen Lighting
February 21st, 2010Flush Mount Lighting Fixtures
February 13th, 2010
Light plays an important part in the look, feel and atmosphere of your house. Whether the light is natural or artificial, the proper use of light can transform your house from drab to dazzling. The play of dappled sunlight through sheer curtains or the glow of a fancy night lamp on the wall surrounding it can evoke wonderful feelings of joy, contentment and satisfaction. Truly, a house becomes a home when it has the right ambiance; otherwise, it is only a shell.
However, to make light work for you, it is important to understand the different kinds of light. To a layman, all lights may seem the same. But, if you want to design your house so it encapsulates all your desires and dreams, then, you have to discern the minute differences in the various types of light.
There are basically three kinds of lights in a room. These are task lighting, accent lighting and ambient lighting. The clever combination of these three kinds of lighting and the appropriate use of each in the different areas of the room will ensure that you have just the right pool of light in every corner of your home.
Task lighting, as the name suggests, is used to throw focused, clear light. This is the kind of lighting you see above study tables, in libraries or in the areas lying above the kitchen workplace. These are busy places where people come only to get their work done. Accent lighting is somewhat similar to task lighting, but its purpose is slightly different. Accent lighting is used to throw certain features of the house into sharp relief. An excellent example is the kind of light used near art pieces to accentuate the beauty of the piece. You can see accent lighting above the vanity mirrors in bathrooms. Ambient lighting, as the name suggests, is used to create ambience. In this case, the light would be a soft, muted glow through a beautiful fixture. Ambient lighting simply enables us to see clearly; it performs the function of natural light. Ambient lighting is a fundamental part of the design of any room.
These kinds of lights can set the right mood to any room. They are versatile and available in all kinds of style and color. So it becomes easy for you to express your individual taste and style. Styles vary from brass, crystal and pewter to popular bronze and wrought iron finishes. In flush mount lighting fixtures, the bulb is completely covered by the bowl of the fixture. These fixtures make use of bulbs with lower wattages, as there is no gap for the heat generated by the bulb to exit.
These fixtures are a fantastic substitute for recessed lighting.
By: Dhaval Suthar
Do You Know How To Choose The Right Lighting for Reading?
February 5th, 2010
There are a number of factors to take into consideration when deciding on the best kind of lighting for reading. Although more and more individuals are deciding to gather information about the world we live in by means other than reading a book, a significant part of the world’s population continues to read traditional, printed material in the form of books, magazines, etc.
The younger reader experiences fewer problems with poor illumination while reading. For example, some research concludes that we need only half the light at age 30 to have adequate reading illumination as compared to what we need at age 60 to read the same material. Age 40 seems to be the beginning of diminishing eyesight for most. The older we get, the more we are prone to eyestrain, blurring vision and headaches as a result of inadequate lighting while reading.
So, the first and primary consideration is selecting a fixture that will provide the right amount of illumination.
The rooms in your home where you do most of your reading should have lighting that illuminates the area in a general way that makes the room feel attractive and inviting. Where possible, combine general light with directed or task lighting. The lighting selected for reading should be considered supplemental and an addition to the general lighting used in the room.
A number of writers on this subject offer a variety of suggestions and options with respect to the type of lighting fixtures to use for reading. I am a strong believer in the use of what is called full spectrum lighting. This type of lighting is also known as natural lighting and was originally used for providing simulated natural sunlight to help with the growth of indoor plants. This natural lighting is easy on the eyes, brings out the true colors of what it illuminates, and relieves eyestrain.
The most common type of full spectrum light is the incandescent bulb, although full spectrum lights are also available as fluorescent fixtures. Several years ago, these natural lighting fixtures were hard to find and fairly expensive when compared to more conventional lighting sources, but they are currently available in nearly all home centers and in many grocery and discount department stores.
The life expectancy of natural light fixtures is comparable to that of traditional light fixtures and well worth the extra few dollars.
The best type of directed lighting unit to buy for purposes of reading are by and far the gooseneck lamp. While a table lamp may be more attractive, it has the disadvantages of not being able to direct the light to where it is needed and in general is not adjustable. Lighting manufacturers have gotten savvy to the need for designing and manufacturing stylish and attractive gooseneck lamps and you can find one to meet your own particular decorating tastes with very little trouble.
Directed or task lighting provided by a gooseneck lamp should be positioned behind your reading chair or couch. The lamp should be positioned behind you according to whether you are left or right handed to avoid overshadowing as you read. Right-handed individuals should position the lamp behind their left shoulder while left-handed persons should do the opposite. If you have a mixture of “handedness” in your home, everyone should be advised about this positioning.
Using a white of lightly colored shade will help with the illumination of the material while darker colored shades absorb rather than reflect the illumination.
Glare is another major consideration when using a reading light. With a gooseneck lamp, position the bottom of the shade at eye level to avoid glare. The gooseneck lamp makes it easy to adjust the height of the light source depending on the size of the person using it.
Indirect lighting has become popular over the years and provides a concealed light source, which diffuses the light and eliminates glare, which can be a real problem in causing eyestrain and a number of other vision-related problems.
Installing dimmer switches will allow you to regulate the intensity of the light generated and serves the purpose of making one fixture useable for both older and younger readers.
For the serious reader, a light stand can be a real boon. The stand can be positioned to keep the material at the best distance and angle for optimum reading as well as helping keep it in focus and reduce the strain of holding a book while you are reading. Reading stands are particularly useful for the older reader and those with medical conditions that make it more difficult to hold a book steady for any length of time.
Let common sense and an awareness of your particular comfort level be an important guide in setting up your areas for reading. If you find some of my suggestions just don’t seem to work for you, try to discover why and make adjustments accordingly.
A lot of people find it restful and relaxing to read before or as a prelude to falling asleep. There are some special considerations to keep in mind if you are one of these people.
Many sleeping areas use overhead lighting fixtures as their primary source of illumination. First, overhead lighting in the bedroom usually doesn’t provide enough brightness to read comfortably and second, overhead lighting provides too much overall room lighting for anyone getting ready to go to sleep. This is a particular problem if you are sharing a room with someone who is not a “snooze-reader”.
Here are some other ways to light the sleeping area for the reader. Use a small table lamp positioned on your side of the bed making sure that the shade is low enough to avoid glare, use lamps that are attached to a mechanism that can be swung into just the right position over the reader (a variation on the gooseneck lamp), use a floor lamp with three-way bulbs to decrease the intensity of the illumination and finally, position a fixture on the wall directly above the reader that will cast only enough light to illuminate the book or other reading material.
If you don’t sleep alone, your goal is to keep the non-reader in the dark while you are reading. Some strange individuals (self-included) sleep soundly with the lights on or off. If this doesn’t cause a problem for your partner, consider whatever lighting works best and even consider a timer that can be reached easily if it shuts the lights off as you are just getting to the part of the book that reveals whodunit.
A few individuals find portable book lights handy. These LED light sources never burn out and generally last up to 20 hours on a set of batteries.
While not a complete or comprehensive guide to lighting for reading, I hope that this brief overview will provide you with some basics to consider.
By: Chuck Lunsford
