Living Room Lighting: 20 Powerful Ideas to Improve your Lighting

IT'S TIME TO UPGRADE YOUR LIVING ROOM LIGHTS!

Tired of not being able to see what you're doing? Old outdated light fixtures which look ancient or plain ugly? You've got some lighting but it's still not bright enough to read a book? Or your rooms just don't have enough lighting fixtures built in?

You shouldn't have to suffer in the dark!

It's time to shed light on your situation with these powerful living room design tips.

Read on for expert living room decorating ideas to help you bring your living room design ideas to life!

Ask yourself, what do you want your living room lighting to do?

When deciding how to decorate a living room with better lighting, there are different types of living room light fixtures and lamps designed for different purposes.

Throwing in some living room lighting fixtures might not be the best idea if you need bright light next to a chair. Or a couple of living room lamps may not be enough ambient light to fill a family room for your next Super Bowl party. You might even just have the wrong type of lamp shades attached for your needs.

Think about what each area of the living room needs

Try breaking down the room into functional areas.

Ask yourself, where do you need the most light?

Does it need to be bright and focused or a background ambient light?

• Lighting the whole living room, in general, raises overall ambient light
• A brighter light near to where you perform activities helps you read and focus
• Adding decorative accent lamps highlights your living room decor and furniture

Match the most appropriate type of lighting to the kind of light you need

Modern living room lighting design can feature either ambient lighting, task lighting, or accent lighting.

These different kinds of light placement and "concentration" are mainly to do with how focused or localized the light is - is it spread out (diffused) through the room reflecting off surfaces, or is there more direct focused light close to a person performing an activity.

Did you know there are different forms of lighting?

Different types of light fixtures and lamps attempt to solve one problem: "How do I position the light at the correct horizontal and vertical position in a room to serve a purpose?"

This is usually accomplished through different forms or shapes of light. The physical design of the fixture or lamp itself makes use of one of three possibilities:

• 1. Ceiling lights, for example hanging from a chain making use of gravity, or attached close to the ceiling itself
• 2. Floor lights, attempting to overcome gravity, for example with a floor-standing lamp or an accent up-light
• 3. Table lights, placing light in the mid-level of the room by sitting the light source on top of embedded into some other furniture, such as with a table lamp, desk lamp, or low hanging pendant light

Different types of lights

Types of lights may spread the light out in different ways depending on the design. For example, a table lamp typically reflects some light out the top and bottom of the shade spreading it out more below, whereas a chandelier may radiate light in all directions.