home lighting Monterey

6 Common Home Lighting Mistakes Everyone Makes

Lighting your home is essential in improving your general living. Some common home lighting mistakes that people make can lead to a lack of light where needed or wasted energy. Here are six common home lighting mistakes everyone makes.

1. Using One Light Source

Using one source of light will leave dark spaces in your home. You will not have enough light to perform functions, especially in your kitchen. Adding layers to your lighting will increase your home comfort and add balance to ensure all areas in the room receive sufficient light.

Areas like the kitchen require ample light since it’s where you prepare your food. When you don’t have ample lighting, you may end up struggling to cook or hurt yourself when using utensils like a knife. You can improve lighting in your kitchen by installing simple fixes such as under-cabinet strip lighting or overhead track lighting with adjustable lamps.

You can add layers such as task, ambient, and accent lighting that will work together to achieve balanced lighting. You can use the ambient layer for overhead lighting and the accent layer for creative lighting on artistic elements. The task layer is for functional spaces for activities like the kitchen.

Accent lighting is rarely used since it requires a bit of creativity to pull it off, but it can bring your room to life with the right application. When using ambient lighting, ensure that you also incorporate other lighting layers to prevent your room from looking flat and dull.

2. Insufficient Lighting

When installing home lighting, most people usually forget about small spaces such as pantries and closets. Others install a single overhead light that does not sufficiently light up the whole room. It leaves shadows on the storage space and shelves, making the task of finding items very challenging. You can also install LED tape lights or under-cabinet lights in small spaces so that you can navigate easily. These lights also make your storage appear stylish and clean.

3. Lack of Lighting Controls

Incorporating lighting controls in your lighting plan is essential to aid in automation and to adjust your home lighting. Timers, dimmers, and motion sensors can help you save money on your electricity bill when appropriately used.

Dimmers are ideal in creating a more intimate ambiance with low-level lighting such as dining rooms, master bathrooms, living rooms, or bedrooms. They are also suitable for incandescent lamps to help reduce energy consumption and heat emission. Installing dimmers in your incandescent bulbs will help to increase their lifespan. Alternatively, you can use LED bulbs to change their color, dim, and perform other practical and fun things using your smartphone.

There are two types of motion sensors that is the vacancy and occupancy sensors. They turn the lights on or off when you forget. Timers are ideal for outdoor lights when used together with photocells.

4. Poor Positioning

Choosing the correct fixture is as important as placing it effectively in a room. Placing the fixture in the wrong place can ruin the room’s design and cast shadows. A room can have a cave-like feeling even when it has plenty of lights due to poor positioning.
When using recessed can layout to light your kitchen, ensure that you place the lights above the workspaces or countertops rather than over the entire room. This is because can lights fail to illuminate vertical surfaces with enough light where the eyes perceive the light.

Another example of lights that are often placed in the wrong position are wall sconces in the bathroom. To reduce shadows cast by overhead lights, ensure you put them at eye level about six inches from either side of the mirror.

Excess use of recessed lights around the ceiling is not appropriate as downlights do not light up walls. To sufficiently light up the room, your walls need to reflect the light. Superfluous use of recessed lights will leave your rooms poorly lit and increase your electricity bills. Install recessed lighting in ideal places and combine it with other types of lighting such as stylish pendants, beautiful chandeliers, wall and floor lamps, or track lighting systems.

5. Choosing the Wrong Light Bulb

Choosing the wrong light bulb for your room can make it feel dark and cold. One of the first mistakes people make when buying a light bulb is getting the wrong wattage. The amount of energy used in a light bulb is referred to as the watt. Using energy-efficient light bulbs can save your money on your electricity bill while giving the same amount of light using fewer watts.

It’s essential that you perform a little research to determine the wattage requirements of your home lighting fixture. Light bulbs have their wattage requirements, and the wattage limit is labelled or printed on them. If you are unsure of your existing light bulbs, you can uninstall them to confirm. To save energy in your home, you can use lower watts than the recommended but do not go higher as this could cause a fire.

Another common mistake with light bulbs is ignoring the lumen rating. This shows how bright the light bulb is. A light bulb with a higher lumen rating will appear brighter. When choosing a light bulb, remember that you need different levels of brightness in different rooms. Workspaces such as the kitchen require more light. Thus, you need to install light bulbs with a higher lumen rating. Other areas such as the living room or the bedroom can have light bulbs with lower lumen rating since they do not require a lot of brightness.

Your design and use of your rooms will determine the lumens you need. If you are looking for a design aesthetic that is dark and moody then, you will go for a lower lumen, while a bright design will require a higher lumen. You can adjust the lumen with seasonal changes or when you repaint your walls.

Buying the wrong light bulb color is a common mistake most people make. Light bulbs have different color hues and a wide range of light temperatures. The temperature of light bulbs is measured in Kelvins (K), and it affects how the room feels. Warm light bulbs range from 2000K to 3500K and give your space a cozy and soft intimate feel with a yellow or orange hue. It is common with vintage light bulbs such as incandescent light bulbs or Edison bulbs. You may also notice this type of hue during sunsets and sunrises. This color is ideal for rooms such as the bedroom, living room or dining room.

Natural or cool light bulbs range from 3500K to 5000K and give off a truer white color. It is identical to light present in the afternoon and morning outside. It gives a room a crisp, clean and inviting feel ideal for closets, bathrooms and offices.
Daylight light bulbs range from 500K to 6200K and give off a similar light to that of a sunny day at noon. It is a good choice for work spaces such as garages and kitchens since it is more crisp and clean than natural light.

Blue light bulbs are over 6200K, and they are not ideally used in homes. However, people with seasonal effective disorder or artists may use this type of light.

6. Leaving Out Exterior Lighting

Some people may forget to light the exterior spaces or install too much lighting. Lighting up your exterior spaces can improve the security of your home. However, a bright exterior light shining on your window will affect your comfort while you sleep. You can install solar landscaping lights to improve the beauty and safety of your yard at night. Motion-activated security lights are also vital in conserving energy and improving convenience as they light up after detecting movement.

If you are making any of the mistakes on the list, you may need to correct them to conserve energy and improve your comfort at home. If you have any issues with interior lighting fixtures santa cruz ca, you can visit the Lighter Inc. in Pacific Grove for more information.