the #1 easiest way to instantly turn your home into a cozy sanctuary
Lighting plays an absolutely crucial role in setting the mood and functionality of your home. Oftentimes our homes or apartments come with overhead lighting that is lackluster - it makes everything so bright or one light bulb is white and the other is warm.
Your home is supposed to be the place you go to recharge, whether that be after your 9-5 or after the kids get put to bed. Decorating the home takes time, especially when on a budget; however lighting is a quick and budget friendly way to change the ambiance of your home.
In this blog post, we’ll be covering -
Ambient Lighting
Task Lighting
Accent Lighting
Dimmers
LED Energy Efficient Lighting
There are three main types of lighting that will instantly change your space:
Ambient Lighting
This is going to be your main source of lighting in the room. Ambient lighting will give you the baseline level of light in any given room. Think ceiling lights, recessed lighting, or floor lamps. For a nice cozy feeling, fixtures with a color temperature ranging anywhere from 2700 Kelvin to 3000 Kelvin will help you achieve that look.
Floor lamp providing ambient level of light
These LED bulbs can be placed in many different fixtures you already have around the house and they’re a more neutral but still warm 3000K!
If you’re going for something even warmer and moody, try these -
These are especially great if the fixture you’re changing out is glass or you can see through it. The Edison bulbs bring a vintage touch even to modern rooms and much nicer to look at.
Task Lighting
Task lighting is specifically to help people to perform specific tasks. Examples of this could be a desk lamp, pendant lighting above the kitchen island, or specific bedside lighting for reading. These lights help you perform tasks more efficiently and reduce strain on your eyes.
Just because this lighting is functional doesn’t mean that they can’t also be pleasing to the eye.
Here are some of my favorite examples:
This beside lamp is a great example of a task lamp because you can make it directional to you OR you can turn the light towards the wall and the light will bounce off of that wall and provide ambient lighting. It’s basically a two for one. It has three different color temperatures available (Spoiler: you’ll want the 2700K for night time) and it’s dimmable!!
Another great task lighting edition would be a desk lamp. Often underrated but straining our eyes can really take a toll late at night and you might not even realize it.
This desk lamp has an antique brass finish which is really trendy, is full range dimmable, and is LED. I love how you can change the angle which makes it a fantastic addition for a modern office.
Accent Lighting
Accent Lighting is the third type of lighting and it’s meant to attract your eye to specific points in the room. You can use it to highlight art or picture frames on a wall or you can even use it on a exterior to light a walkway for both visual interest and safety.
As far as styling an interior, we’ll stick with an example that would look great with the previously mentioned warm lighting and the brass accents from the last section.
Here’s an example of a renter friendly wall accent lighting. The gold matches with the trendy gold and most importantly renter friendly!! It’s so hard to find wall mounted lights that really elevate a space that doesn’t have to be hardlined. This 2 pack is battery operated and comes with a remote to even control the brightness.
These three kinds of lighting, especially when combined, will instantly create a cozy atmosphere. Start with picking a floor lamp that is warm and provides some kind of baseline of light. The add in a table lamp, whether it be a bedside lamp or a desk lamp to provide the functional light that you’ll need for your tasks. Lastly, accent lighting will make your space come alive and provide texture and dimension. Do this by picking a couple of focal points around the room, any art you have or any furniture you’d like to highlight and add either a wall scone of some sort or even a puck light added BEHIND piece of furniture to illuminate it.
Combine all three and your guests will be wondering how you did it.
Being able to dim your lighting will help you transition seamlessly from daytime to nighttime. Many lighting fixtures you find online nowadays will have dimmers, but what if you already have light bulbs in a floor lamp that doesn’t have that capability?
The Edison light bulbs previously mentioned are dimmable, they just need the actual tool to dim them. Here’s an example of a dimmer that would allow you full control of the dimmable bulbs. I absolutely love this one because it has a remote control element AND a place to put the remote that looks like a real light switch. I wouldn’t have recommended this honestly if it didn’t have the light switch element because it’s waaaaay too easy to lose these remotes. I don’t even remember where my TV one is - HELP.
LED Bulbs
Lastly, I just wanted to stress how changing the bulbs in your home can actually save you money year round on your electricity bill.
LED bulbs use up to 90% less electricity as well as last up to 25 times longer than regular incandescent bulbs. I love an incandescent bulb and honestly, when LEDs first started coming out, I wasn’t a fan because the color wasn’t quite right. However, they’ve really come a long way and changing out your bulbs is an easy and cost effective way to lower your energy consumption.
That’s Home Lighting in a Nutshell
There’s a lot of expensive ways to elevate your home and you can eventually build your way up to that, but if not wanting to spend a lot of money is stopping you from creating a space for yourself that you can really recharge in - start small. Start with lighting. Start with just the bulbs for your floor lamp and work your way up. It’s one of the easiest and fastest ways to change the ambience of a room. You’ll thank yourself. Your guests will thank you too.
I hope you enjoyed reading! Stay tuned for more ways to elevate your space on a budget.
xo
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