Decorate with lighting: beyond lighting

Light points not only serve to see the surrounding environment better. Lighting can also be used to decorate. In addition to the furniture, curtains or objects in a room, one of the factors that most helps to achieve a certain atmosphere is luminosity.

The type of lamp, tone of bulb and direction of light have a lot to do with how cosy, lively or technological a room is. And a room’s visual composition is notably influenced by the quality of its ambient lighting. Looking for ideas about decorating with light?

Warm colours, cool colours, led bulbs

Before delving into the subject and looking at some ideas about decoration through lighting, it is worthwhile remembering two basic points about light. The first is to do with what is known as colour temperature, a range that goes from deep red at 1000K to deep blue at 12000K.

Both tones can create the feeling of a quiet and calm environment, but they do so in different ways. Red evokes the sunset, and your brain relates it to relaxation and the time to go to bed. Blue, evokes the sunrise, and your brain interprets it as the time to awaken and become active. It is important to keep this in mind before making decisions.

The second essential point is to understand that LEDs are the most efficient type of light emitter. For all the decorative solutions in this article, the possibility of acquiring led lamps or bulbs has been taken into account. In this way, you will have a beautiful home which will also be efficient.

Divide up environments by using lines of light

Light is a very elegant solution when dividing up a room, something that both focal lamps and 'line of light' lamps can help with, and even tube lamps or led strips embedded in the wall. This is an interesting way of defining uses using light as a dividing line. In addition, most solutions are commercial, which you are able to buy and install directly without having to be a handyman.

1. Use focal lamps or lamps with straight and opaque lampshades. Oriented towards a wall, the light they project will draw a line, either straight or at an angle, which, in any case, creates a division on the wall. On one side, a space which is lit up. On the other, a space which is left in the dark. In the image, you can see them being used on a stairway, although they can be used vertically.
2. "Line of light" lamps. This type of lamp consists of a bar of approximately one metre long which marks a straight line on the wall. Vertically, it divides the space into segments, one on one side and one on the other, illuminating both. In the example above they can be seen vertically and diagonally.
3. Tube lamps. They are somewhat difficult to locate and hang correctly but, once you have managed to put them in the correct position, they create a fantastic dividing line to differentiate between spaces. In the example, what is inside and what is outside the sofa. They are also useful as corner lamps.
4. Led strips embedded in the walls. They are undoubtedly the most complicated from an installation point of view, but the result is unbeatable. There are many ways to install them: making a straight channel in the wall where the led strip is to be put, placing a U-profile drilled into the wall, or gluing the led to the wall and surrounding it on either side with painted wooden slats.

Using the ceiling to bounce light

As a general rule, light points are used to illuminate certain objects or areas. Thus, the lamp on the study table points to the computer keyboard, and the one above the living room points to the sofa. However, there is a second use of light, this time for decoration, which consists precisely in not directing the light towards any object: pointing it at the ceiling.

This mechanism’s achievement is to make the visible light the light reflected by the ceiling, with a partial reduction in its intensity which turns the ceiling into a diffuse light emitter. It is an interesting way to 'break' with a closed beam of light, even with lamps with a lampshade. Although not all lamps allow this type of use.

The best tools to do this are floor lamps, particularly those that allow you to turn the head or twist the body so that the bulb faces upward. In this way, you go from a focal lamp to a bright ceiling that provides an abundance of ambient light.

Both in this and in other solutions in this article, it is important to note that the lamps that are most adaptable are those that can be moved from one side to another, that allow direct light, and that can change their colour temperature via programming. Thus, different spaces can be set up with the same items.

Decorative lamps, a simple way to make things beautiful

One of the easiest ways to decorate your home with light is to have a look at standardised solutions such as ambient lamps. There are many different models, from vertical ones with screens that blur the output of reddish light, to false accordion-style books that bring originality to shelving.

Although there are no written rules for this type of decoration, reddish tones and light bulbs with a colour temperature close to 1500 K or 2500 K tend to predominate. This creates easy-going and relaxed atmospheres. The same lamps, with bluish tones, evoke a lively and functional atmosphere, which is why many commercial premises prioritise white light.

Among the advantages of these types of lamp is being able to move them from one place to another, changing the appearance of the same room quickly and with very few resources. They are usually placed in corners, or in the centre of very large rooms if the goal is to visually divide the room.

In houses, there are many pieces of furniture that reach almost all the way up to the ceiling, but remain a few inches or several feet from it. A common example is kitchen utensil cabinets, study book shelves, decorative living room furniture, or bedroom wardrobes. And on all of them you can place light bands that provide atmosphere.

These led strips usually consist of a small transformer and several diode bands connected to each other. They have an adhesive strip under the LEDs, and are extremely easy to fit: just remove the protective paper, leaving the adhesive in the air, and stick them where you want to provide an optical effect.

One of the advantages of these systems, in addition to their low consumption, is that many of these strips allow integration with systems such as Alexa or Google Home with which you can program colours. Or at least they include a remote control to change hues and set up patterns.

Of course, in addition to fit them on top, it is possible to fit this lighting system underneath furniture. On baseboards, under drawers, behind electrical appliances, inside cabinets or around furniture are other possibilities. A white led strip underneath kitchen units will allow you to see the entire worktop.

Crossing various tones of beams

Combining several soft light sources is particularly attractive when they are close to a wall. This is where their respective beams of light converge, forming patterns on the wall's smooth surface. A worthwhile experiment is to place one light source at one end of the room and another at the other, achieving a colour gradient on the surfaces.

This gamer aesthetic is very common in the world of video games, and it is very easy to program thanks to the IoT. Some solutions even enable lights to 'dance' to the rhythm of music or adapt to those shown in a video game, achieving an immersive atmosphere thanks to such lighting.

Areas bounded by light

One more way to divide the environment in a home is to 'delimit a given piece of information' using light. This is achieved thanks to spotlights, which allow you to point to a series of objects and make them stand out from the rest. Thus, if a person passes through a room lit only by a bulb whose light is captured by an opaque lampshade, everything under it will stand out.

These types of lights are widely used to highlight sections on shelving or objects in cabinets. Also to highlight objects such as coffee tables, leaving areas with armchairs in the dark, while prioritising the food.

Sunlight, curtains and slats

This article wouldn’t be complete without mentioning natural lighting and its uses, starting with the most basic: a window pane letting in the light. This environment is consistent with an active home that seeks to adapt its rhythms to those of the sun. Thus, in the morning there will be one type of light, and in the afternoon another. But all this can be modulated by two key elements: curtains and slats.

A very versatile way to decorate with sunlight is to install rods with two sets of curtains. If possible, not too opaque, and in different colours. In this way, we can display up to four scenarios with few elements: colour one, colour two, both colours mixed and no colour (sunlight). Simply choose a combination of the latter to decorate the room in a specific tone.