Indoor lighting refers to any lamp, pendant, or fixture used to illuminate the interior of your house, workplace, factory, or workshop. These include the fixtures which are already installed in your home and anything else that you add to match the décor. There are three major aspects of indoor lighting; ambient lighting, accent lighting and task lighting. An ideal layering of these three types of lighting make up the indoor lighting for your home. It is important to note that indoor lighting fixtures are not designed to withstand weather changes such as rain or dust storms and therefore, should only be used indoors. Let us learn a little bit more about the different aspects of indoor lighting.
What Does Indoor Lighting Do?
Lighting gives a space another dimension and gives an interior design project vitality. Excellent lighting adds height and depth, illuminates cosy spaces, and highlights your most striking features. The right amount of light and shade is crucial for revitalising a room's atmosphere. Lighting gives a space another dimension and lends an interior design project vitality. Excellent lighting adds height and depth, illuminates cosy spaces, and highlights your most striking features. The right amount of light and shade is crucial for revitalising a room's vibe.
What is the Importance of Indoor Lighting?
The quality of life is positively impacted by good illumination. The correct lighting is crucial for comfort, performance, and health (both physically and emotionally), both at home and at work. Light produces visual worlds that are continually present in our daily lives from an aesthetic perspective. Environments in which we do business, interact, learn, play, shop, watch shows, play sports, and live. About 20% of the electrical energy used in buildings is used for lighting, according to energy consumption statistics. Today, effective lighting design can also contribute to a building's increased energy efficiency.
In commercial settings, it can enhance design, support strategic customer flow, and assist in emphasising particular items. It involves customisation, ranging from eye-catching lighting for specific sorts of stores (such as some apparel stores) to lighting that fosters a cosy atmosphere in fine dining establishments.
How Should Indoor Lighting Be?
The use of warm light temperatures for common areas, combining direct light with indirect light to create different ambiances, and placing LED strips in wardrobes—a simple approach that is highly practical for daily life—are some of the keys to good interior lighting. Similar to furniture, lighting is a decorative element. Although we may offer suggestions, each home must be a true representation of its owners' preferences. You can not achieve the desired effect with only one kind of lighting. Instead, you need to use different fixtures such as string lights, pendant lights, lamps and decorative lights to layer your indoor lighting and make them compliment your décor well.
What is the Best Lighting for Indoors?
The look, feel, and functionality of your home are significantly influenced by light, which can come from both natural and artificial sources. On the colour-temperature scale, LED bulbs at 2700K cast a warm yellow light resembling outdated incandescent lamps, making them an excellent all-purpose option. Bathrooms and laundry rooms benefit from the whiter light produced by bulbs with a temperature of around 3000K. To get the brightness of a 60-watt incandescent bulb, opt for bulbs with 800 lumens.
Natural light makes interior spaces appear larger and is a well-known remedy to depression, whether it comes from a window, glass door, or skylight. Positive mood is significantly influenced by the amount of natural light in households.
What Colour Temperature Is The Best for Indoor Lighting?
If you think your job is done after deciding the ideal fixtures for different rooms, think again! There are so many more factors to consider to ensure that your lights do not only light up your surroundings but also make you feel comfortable in that space. One such factor is the colour temperature of light. What does it mean though? Colour temperature or Correlated Colour Temperature (CCT) is a term for how warm (yellow) or cool (white) the colour of light emitted from a fixture is. It is measured in units of Kelvin (K) on a scale of 1000-10,000. Anything 3000K or lower accounts for warm light, while cool light is anything 4000K or above. Light with a CCT of 3500K is termed as neutral and can look either warm or cool depending on other lights nearby. Colour temperatures higher than 4000K have very bright light with a bluish daylight cast. These lights are mostly used for commercial and hospital applications.
When it comes to choosing the ideal colour temperature for indoor lighting, warm lighting with yellow hues are preferred in living spaces. Bulbs with 2700K colour temperature are standard for your bedrooms and living rooms as they create a warm and cosy atmosphere. Spaces where relaxation and warmth are not a priority, you can scale it up to 3000k for more clarity. Cool light with hues of blue and green produce more contrast and should be preferred in rooms which are task oriented such as the kitchen or bathroom. However, it is best to use multiple fixtures with warm as well as cool lights in these spaces because of them being multi purpose spaces. For example, the general lighting in these rooms can have a warmer hue to create a relaxed environment but the task lights should have a cooler light to ensure more clarity and brightness. Neutral temperature of 3500K is ideal for décor with heavy earthy tones while paint schemes with cooler colours will be excellently complimented by lights with a CCT of 4000K to 4500K. With modern LED bulbs, you can always choose dimmable options to regulate the colour temperature according to the daylight and your needs.
What are the Points to Consider in Indoor Lighting Design?
If you don't overthink it, choosing lights may seem like an easy option, but when you take into account all of the many factors involved in creating a well-lit workspace, you can see how difficult the process may be. When selecting workplace lighting, keep the following lighting design ideas in mind:
Light Distribution and brightness are one of the most important considerations when working on lighting design. If the lighting is not properly balanced with distribution and brightness, it can lead to health concerns and risk of damage to the eye.
Conservation of energy is another critical concern highlighted by the times we live in and the strain it has put on the environment and our resources. While there are many other types of lighting options available in bulbs, LEDs serve this purpose most effectively.
Appearance of the space and luminaires, as discussed in the other sections, energy efficiency is important, however, we can't ignore the physical appearance of the light fixtures as well. Design choices for lighting should complement the ambience of the office area and be aesthetically pleasant.
Glare can be challenging to design glare-free settings, but some spaces, such as those in office environments are especially in need of glare reduction because it can interfere with people's ability to concentrate on their task.
The appearance of colour: Various physiological responses to different colour temperatures can occur in people. Warm lights are utilised in restaurants because they are cosier and they would also look great in a break room or lobby. Cool hues, on the other hand, more closely resemble actual daylight. Cool lighting can raise employees' output and serotonin levels, which can increase the effectiveness of the entire business.
Lighting control & flexibility: A sophisticated lighting system may require more control than just a light switch to operate, especially if smart features like sensors or automated reactions are being used. The ability of many contemporary systems to operate wirelessly is especially advantageous for retrofitting or for buildings with difficult-to-wire regions. Wireless controllers can be installed virtually anywhere and expanded or moved as necessary.
What is the Difference Between Indoor and Outdoor Lighting?
One may think that lighting is lighting and all lights are interchangeable. That is definitely not true. While there are numerous fixtures available for indoor and outdoor use, the two types are not interchangeable at all. In fact, they differ in more ways than you would expect. While some outdoor fixtures can be used indoors, indoor fixtures are not designed for outdoor use at all. Looking for more clarity on the difference between indoor and outdoor lights? Let’s explore.
The best way to figure out if a light fixture is suitable for outdoor use or not is to look at its UL rating available in its description. UL (Underwriters Laboratory) is a testing and certification agency that certifies lamps and fixtures among many other industrial and commercially available products. The various grades of UL rating help indicate the proper setting and use of an electrical component. Using an electrical component outside of its UL rating can cause the component to fail and may also create a fire hazard.
UL listed for dry locations: This is the most basic UL certification often listed on packaging as ‘UL Listed’. This certification indicates that the fixture is safe for indoor use but should not be exposed to any type of moisture. These fixtures can be safely used in living rooms, bedrooms, hallways and kitchen. Dry location bulbs are not weather adaptive and should not be used outdoors.
UL listed for damp locations: These items are built to resist slightly more moisture than the dry listed items. This means that they are somewhat more watertight but not completely. These can be used in bathrooms, indoor pool areas or utility rooms. They can also be used in fully covered areas outdoors such as covered porches or patios but it should be noted that they can safely withstand only a small amount of moisture and should not be exposed to direct contact with water.
UL listed for wet locations: This is the only UL listing that indicates that the fixture is completely safe to be used outdoors. In areas where there is direct moisture, these fixtures are absolutely necessary. The best thing about this fixture is that it can be used in a variety of ways outside such as to illuminate open decks, porches or patios or even as outdoor decorative lighting.
