What Is Good Light At Home

Lighting up the Living room

Living room has several different functions. Think it over what you usually do in the room and what will make you relax and be comfortable in these situations. The intro has given you some simple guidelines to follow by each of your living room activities whether playing chess or taking a horizontal position on the couch with a book or an i-Pad. Make a composition of light throughout the room and go for “functionality” first, followed by quality of light and how to mute the room into a personal ambience..

Lighting up the Dinning room

Enough light meaning amount of Lux! The right colours; meaning Kelvins, warm cold and finally the best possible colour rendering of the food to be served meaning Ra/CRI. Since many dining rooms are now one and the same room as the kitchen, it comprises many daily activities beside that of dining, like kids homework, it might be appropriate to have a certain multi functional lamp or several, to enlighten the dining table and the young genius and the food to be served. But tables are not only a domestic landscape of food and French vocabulary it is as well the setting of moods at dinners. Dimming the light source could be a good substitute for oozing candles. Light changes how we see people and a blazing light shower makes faces with sharp aggressive shades! Not enough light could send the same faces into a murky disappearance and we will no longer remember who was at that dinner 10 years later. It is important to suspend one or several lamps over the table in such a way that the entire table area is illuminated. Consider that you must have the possibility to entertain your guest unobstructed under the lamp object and the light it provides.

Again it will become a matter of personal wishes if it shall be a diffused light illuminating the entire dining room or it shall be direct light illuminating like actors on a stage in a theatre? Eventually both and may be even at different time during the dinner by having the option to dim the light. 

Lighting up the bedroom

Considering that the most of the time we do not need light in a bedroom, the reason bedrooms are often ignored and bad lighting the result…people sleeping don't sin…but there are no absolutions from bad light in bedrooms. Actually ambiance bedroom lighting is as important as in any other place of the home and not least perfect bedside lighting with the right light sources is essential. Combine pendant lamps with diffuse light with wall or table lamps with direct light, which can be adjusted so that it shines out to where you want to have it when turning around in the bet of excitement when the crime unfolds on page 120 in your book.

Lighting up the kitchen

Kitchens are surely the most essential space in a home for good. Preparing food is a craft that needs motile skills and therefore the best light you can find to prevent accidents and make the preparation of food a visual, tactile, olfactory and gustatory sensation. Light plays in all our sensory faculties a role; it is like an instrumentation of a symphony to which you can be humming in delight when you have the right light! Make sure your light sources have an adequate colour reproduction rating (Ra/CRI), so you can see the colour nuances of the food you’re preparing. Suspend several lamps so the light is dispersed evenly and so that it covers the preparation and cooking areas. Wall lamps can be combined with pendant lamps with good effect.

Invest in light sources for the task lighting with a quality colour rendering index of at least 95 to 100: they make your food look natural and appetizing.

Lighting up home offices

Reading light can be coming from a floor, table or wall lamp, and may be even from a suspended lamp. It makes sense to place the light or yourself in a position that the light doesn’t fall 90° orthogonal to the page but rather in a diagonal direction across the pages. In this way a certain contrast and shadows occur and preventing tired eyes.

Remember, we were all warned that reading in poor light would ruin our eyes. But are poor reading lights really the cause of vision loss? Contrary to popular belief, the answer is no! Reading in low light does not ruin eyesight. Most eyes worsen simply due to ageing. Good reading light can reduce uncomfortable short-term effects such as headaches or eyestrain as well as make reading more enjoyable.

To reduce the conflict in your eye muscles when you’re completing a high-concentration task such as reading, it’s important to focus bright light at a certain angle where it is needed. The angle of light enhances contrast and shadows and has a pleasing relaxing effect on your eyes.

A common mistake people make when choosing light for reading is turning on a bright lamp in a dark room. Your pupils dilate from the dark when they wander off the page, which can make your eyes become easily fatigued – a reason many of us quickly become tired when reading in bed at night.

Reading by light that reflects a lot of bright glare, such as from a computer screen can put a lot of strain on your eyes. It is called a Computer Vision Syndrome and is a truly underestimated health-damaging factor.

Eyes vary with age and as your eyes get older, you need more light to read. The need for more light to read by increases 1 percent a year; meaning by the time you're 60, you need around 100 watts.”

Keep in mind that too much light or glare can be just as bad as too little light. When light glares from highly reflective surfaces it's fatiguing. So if bright light is making you uncomfortable, make use of a shaded lamp rather than a desk lamp to decrease glare and moderate light. Light in the warmer end of the visual spectrum is easier on your eyes than in the cooler end of the spectrum.

At the end of all theories and science your eyes will tell you what they want…it is a good advice to take them serious and adjust to their reactions!

Carsten Joergensen October 27, 2019