Lighting are a tool that you can use to control the brightness and the shadow in the room. While many people tend to think of lighting within a space as a means of providing utility to the space, lighting is actualy a means of control where the darkness exists in the living space. If you dont plan your placement of ceiling light, you may end up with areas of too much brightness and area that are too dark within the same space.
Therefore, you must plan the layout of your lighting fixture to ensure that the lighting provide an even level of brightness throughout the space. There are three specific type of lighting that you must take into account when designing your space. The first lighting type is ambient lighting, which is used for move around the space.
How to Plan Lighting for a Room
The second type is task lighting, which is used for perform specific tasks in the room. The third type of lighting is accent lighting, which is used for highlighting specific object in the room. If you only incorporate one type of lighting in your space, it will appear flatly.
Instead, you should use all three lighting types and incorporate each in different area of your space to allow the lighting to perform it’s specific function. Before you install the lighting in your space, you must first determine the brightness that each area of the space should have. This is known as a light budget for the space.
By determining the brightness that each area of the room should have, you can avoid using too many light in the space, which can cause glareing issues. A proper light budget will ensure that you do not over-light the space, nor under-light the space to the point that the task cannot be performed. Another factor to consider in the installation of lighting is the height of the ceiling.
As with any downlight installation, every downlight will produce a cone of light from the fixture. Furthermore, the distance that the light travel from the ceiling to the floor in the room will determine the size of the cone of light. If the height of the ceiling is high, then the cone of light will travel more further in the space, allowing the fixtures to be spaced further apart from each other.
However, if the height of the ceiling is low, then the cone of light will not travel as far, forcing you to place the lighting fixtures close together to avoid dark patches in the space. You must ensure that each pool of light from the fixtures overlap with each other to create a seamless wash of light in the space. Depending on the shape of the space in which you are installing the lighting, you can use different layout pattern for the lights.
If the shape of the space is rectangular, a symmetrical grid is a recommended lighting layout pattern. However, for an open plan space, it is better to use a zone based approach to lighting. Using a zone-based lighting layout pattern means that you will group the lights around specific objects in the space rather than even spacing the lights in a grid throughout the ceiling.
This lighting layout pattern allow for different area of the space to be treated separately. There are some mistake that you should avoid when installing lighting in your space. One mistake is to place a downlight directly over the head of the person who is sitting on a sofa.
By doing so, you may create harsh shadow on the persons face. Additionally, you should avoid placing the lights too close to the walls in your space. If you place lights too close to the wall, it can create semi-circular shadow along the wall, called scalloping.
Instead, by placing the lights at a distance from the wall, you will create a glow along the wall rather than bright spot of light. Finally, you should think about how you will control the lighting in your space. One mistake to avoid is to connect all the lights to one switch.
By connecting all the lights to one switch, you cannot control the brightness of the lighting in each zone of the space. Instead, you should use separate circuits for the lights to be able to control their brightness for specific task. For example, you can set the lights to 100% brightness when the room is being clean, yet be set to a much softer brightness for other activity in the space.
Furthermore, another control that should be used is LED specific dimmers. These dimmers will not cause the lights to flicker or buzz. By using LED-specific dimmers and separate circuits for each zone in the space, you will have control over the atmosphere that you want to create within the space through the lighting itself.
