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Learn the tips and tricks from experts on how to go about lighting a living room with this detailed guide. We discuss the 3 main types of lighting and advise you on how to blend them together for a perfect lighting plan. We also deep dive into different light fittings and how you can utilise them to execute beautiful living room light ideas in India for your home!
Lighting a living room is not as easy as it seems. While most of us tend to focus on the furniture, lighting plays an important role in setting the mood of the room. Your living room is the place that gives guests their first impression of your home. Besides this, it is also the area where everyone in the family gathers to connect with each other and lighting has a huge role in creating an ambience for the very moment. There are three main types of lighting to know about while creating this ambience:
1. Ambient lighting
2. Task lighting
3. Accent lighting
You must give careful thought and consideration while buying lighting fixtures for your living room. But no need to be too overwhelmed. We've created this comprehensive guide with popular living room light ideas to teach you everything you need to know.
Before we dive into different types of living room light fittings in India, let's first discuss a few questions to ask yourself before you get yourself started.
A simple Google search on 'living room light ideas shows you hundreds of options for inspiration, but because of such an abundance of options, we often get confused about where to begin. Let's take a minute to answer a couple of questions to get us started.
Lighting a small living room is very different from lighting up a bigger space. By choosing the right small living room lighting ideas for your room, you can make your room appear bigger and more spacious. It's not just your living room for that matter. Lighting plays an important role in making any space appear bigger.
Also read: Bathroom Lighting Ideas To Open Up Your Small Bathroom
When choosing the lighting fixtures for your home, you must ensure that your living room lighting design matches the overall interior design of your home. Choosing a grand chandelier design in a living room with minimalist modern furniture can ruin the aesthetic of the room and make the chandelier appear out of place. What you may need instead are modern living room lights that work with the style of the room. So, you must understand the interior design style you want to go for before choosing your lighting fixtures.
Your living room is an area that you'll be using during the day and night. Having a large balcony or window in your living room can change the entire appearance of your room. However, if your living room does not get enough sunlight, you may want daylights that can help brighten up the area.
Having a single big, bright ceiling light as a drawing room light idea can be harsh and can cast unflattering shadows across the room. Instead, identify a few areas of the room where you'd require more light and the remaining parts of your room can be lit with mild, ambient light. Areas near a bookshelf or reading chair may require more light, while the sofa near the TV may not require much lighting. So, before beginning your hunt for living room light fittings, identify the areas you need focused lighting to have a better understanding of how many lights you need in your living room.
One of the most important aspects before considering any living room light ideas in India is to set a budget. It is still possible to decorate your living room with aesthetically pleasing lighting fixtures in India. But a higher budget will allow you to splurge on more elaborate lights like chandeliers and invest in elegant light decoration ideas for living room.
In order to know which types of lighting fixtures you need to buy, we first need to understand some fundamentals of interior design- the three basic types of lighting.
The main types of lighting are classified based on the purpose they serve in your room and utilising them well can set the tone of your room. Broadly speaking, there are 3 main types-
Also known as general lighting, the main purpose of ambient lighting is to disperse uniform illumination throughout a space. As opposed to special lighting that focuses on certain sections of the room, the ambient lighting reaches every part of the space with its soft essence. It is usually the primary light for the space and creates the foundation for any of your living room light ideas in India.
Choosing the right ambient light for room can make or break the space. It also helps determine the tone of the room. Bedroom spaces with warmer ambient light can make the room appear cosier while commercial spaces like hospitals have cooler ambient lights to make the space appear more clean and hygienic.
For commercial space lighting in India, you can check out Jaquar's range of high quality commercial indoor lighting options.
In this way, ambient light can also change the colour of the room. When you place an ambient light near a coloured wall, the wall may look completely different as the light bounces off it. So this is something to keep in mind while choosing your living room lighting design as it may change the appearance of your wall colours.
Ambient lights also need to be strategically placed to ensure that the shadows caused by them don't disrupt the purpose of the room. Let's take a look at an example of a living room lighting idea where the ambient light is placed on a wall directly behind a reading chair. This light may cast a harsh shadow when you are sitting down to read, thereby hindering your ability to read. For this purpose, task lighting might be a better fit.
A room with only ambient lighting fixtures can overly brighten up the entire space while also making the room appear smaller. One of the best living room light ideas in India is to combine ambient lighting with task lighting. But before we discuss blending two types of light, let's first talk about what task lighting is.
Task lighting in interior design is a type of light which illuminates a specific area where a task is being performed. An example of this would be a table lamp placed on a desk. Task lighting helps illuminate only a specific part of the room, therefore allowing for a focused activity to be carried out without having to light up the entire space. Task lighting can also help give a directional flow to the entire room. Table lamps, standing lamps and bathroom vanity lights are some of the best fixtures to use to utilise task lighting in any room.
If you are looking for lighting fixture options in India for your bathroom with elegant task lighting to elevate your vanity area, check out the blog: best lighting picks for your bathroom.
Accent lighting is a type of lighting style where the fixture highlights a specific object or area. They draw attention to an item or a feature and transform them into focal points. A good example of accent lights is recessed spotlights in museums that highlight a particular painting or sculpture. These lights tend to be brighter than ambient lighting and task lighting in interior design, but when strategically placed, they draw the eye to the desired object.
Accent lights work exceptionally well as living room light ideas in India as they help draw attention to showpieces that you'd want to emphasise. Adding track lights or wall-mounted luminaires to a painting or sculpture in your home can upgrade the overall aesthetic of your living room.
When you are looking for living room light ideas, you may want to incorporate 2 or more types of lighting to elevate the mood of your room and make it appear more welcoming. Now, let's take a look at some types of fixtures that you can install and where each item belongs in your living room.
Here are some popular lighting fixtures to brighten up your living room and ensure that it is beautifully lit for every gathering. You can layer up these lighting fixtures to emphasise certain aspects of the room while creating a visual balance.
Wall lights or wall sconces are lighting fixtures that are mounted on a wall. While a single wall light may not be enough to entirely give you ambient light for the room, it can add a layer to your ambience and elevate any interior space. You can find wall lights in all shapes, sizes and styles to perfectly match the interior style of your living room.
Besides being installed inside the house, you can also install wall lights on the outside wall of your house to softly illuminate your home while also serving as an ornate, decorative piece.
Tip: A great living room lighting idea for a larger room is to use matching wall sconces in pairs to create more balance in the space.
With Jaquar, you can get some of the best wall lights for ambient lighting at your living room in several styles to match the aesthetic of every home.
As the name suggests, ceiling lights are those that are fitted on the ceiling wall. And while they serve the functional purpose of bathing the entire room in ambient light, a ceiling light can do so much more than just that. Choosing the right ceiling light design for living room is essential as it can be a statement piece in your room. A strategically placed and styled ceiling light can act as a focal point of the room and tie all elements of your interior design together. Here are a few types of ceiling lights to inspire your living room light ideas in India.
Check out Jaquar's Cyno- our latest ceiling lighting fixture that you'll want to buy for your living room! Check out the below video to learn more:
Flush-mounted ceiling lights hang very close to their ceiling, attract little attention and are great for homes with a low ceiling.
Tip: Add a dimmer to your ceiling lights so that you can turn the lighting down during intimate conversations and movie nights. You can even get smart light bulbs installed so you can control the dimmer and lighting from your mobile phone. Read more about how to light up your home with smart lights here.
Lights that hang low over your living room from your ceiling is called pendant lights. These lights create a focused source of light and can work as both, ambient and task lights based on their placement in the room.
Tip: To elevate your living room's interior design, fit your pendant lights in clusters of two or three and allow them to hang at different lengths.
Chandeliers are lights that hang from the ceiling and contain three or more light bumps that give off a mild beam of light. Depending on the living room chandelier ideas you want, they can be opulent and elaborate or even simple and modern. It's a common misconception that chandeliers are impractical as small living room ceiling lights but this isn't necessarily true. You can get a small chandelier for living room that can brighten up the space without taking up too much room.
Tip: It helps to have a minimum of 10ft ceiling height to install a chandelier. However, if you have low ceilings, you can still find a living room chandelier ideas that works with your space. You can find more tips on choosing the right chandelier for your living room here.
Your living room is usually where you would be displaying your most coveted artwork and showpieces and what better way to display these masterpieces than with track lights? Track lights aim task lighting to a specific area and are usually attached to the ceiling.
Tip: Place your track lights parallel to the wall on which you want to display your artwork.
e) Recessed Ceiling Lights
One of the simplest living room ceiling lighting ideas in India is to install recessed ceiling lights. Usually installed in the hollow of the ceiling like a false ceiling, these living room spotlights are great to illuminate the room with a clean, even ambient light. If you are looking for efficient, functional and modern living room lights, then recessed ceiling lights are for you.
Tip: If you looking for small living room lighting ideas, recessed lights can make the space appear bigger as the lights take up minimal visual space while making the space appear larger because of "wall washing". Wall washing is a process which illuminates the walls evenly without creating harsh shadows; therefore making the space appear bigger.
Cove lighting is one of the most popular drawing room lighting ideas in recent times and it looks like this style is here to stay. Cove lighting or ambient luminescence is a style of lighting where lights are placed under a trim/ wall lip or recesses of ceilings and they shine a diffused light directed towards the ceiling. This style of lighting adds a dramatic but soft glow to your living room while providing mild, accent lighting to the entire space. Cove lights cannot however be the only lighting present in the room as it does not provide sufficient light to illuminate the entire space. Instead, they can be combined with wall lights and chandeliers to create a cohesive and aesthetically pleasing living room space.
Tip: Not just for your living room ceiling lighting ideas, you can install cove lights on your wall with a TV to softly illuminate the space without any distracting beams of light.
While table lamps are more commonly seen in bedrooms and home offices, they can be an excellent addition to your living room lighting design as they illuminate a small space while providing task lighting to the area. Modern table lamps for living room are more minimalistic in design but we would recommend getting decorating your room with table lamps that match the overall interior design of your room.
Tip: Get decorative lamps for living room in pairs and place them on either side of the room. This is one of the best light decoration ideas for living room as it provides visual balance and ensures cohesiveness between the furniture and lighting fixtures.
Standing or floor lamps are great lighting additions to your living room, particularly for modern living room lights. These floor lamps for living room add delicate, soft task lighting to the room and are perfect when placed near a reading chair or bookshelf. Most standing decorative lamps for living room come with brightness and lighting colour options, allowing you to choose one that suits your mood.
Tip: If you have low ceilings, install decorative lamps for living room that are between 4 -6 feet as they give an illusion of more vertical space.
You can combine two or more of these lighting fixtures to create an infinite number of living room light ideas. While the combination depends on several factors like the size of the room, its interior style, budget and personal preference, here are some general tips to keep in mind while designing your dream living room.
To sum it up, let's discuss a couple of tips to keep in mind on light decoration ideas for living room.
With these tips and tricks, you too can master lighting up your living room perfectly. And if you need any help with choosing the right lighting, Jaquar is always there to help you out.
You can schedule a virtual consultation with our experts to discuss all things lighting. What are you waiting for? Check out Jaquar lighting India today!
There are several strategies to apply when it comes to small living room lighting ideas. Having a single source of ambient light can actually make the room appear smaller. Instead, incorporate different lighting fixtures like modern table lamps for living room, living room spot lights and cove lights to add variety and visual balance. You can even add a small chandelier for living room or other types of small living room ceiling lights like pendant lights to make the room appear bigger.
You can place your floor lights/ standing lamps in the corner of your living room, near a bookshelf. You can add a rocking chair or couch to the same corner to create an ultimate, cosy reading nook!
Warm-toned lights are proven to make us feel more relaxed, which is definitely what you want to feel in your living room. We'd recommend using warm-white LED bulbs for your living room. If you are looking to light your living room during the daytime too, you can also utilise neutral whites that mimic daylight.
If you are looking for living room lighting ideas for a low ceiling in India, then try lights that open up the vertical space like wall lights, floor lights and table lamps for your ambient lighting. Ceiling lights on a low ceiling can actually make the room look smaller, hence you need to carefully choose modern living room lighting ideas low ceilings.
