4 Tips for Making Your Home’s Lighting More Inviting

One of the best ways to make your home more inviting is by changing up some lighting. You can do this in many ways, but here are four easy ones that you may not have thought about.

1. Use Lamps Instead of Overhead Lights

Lighting from sources directly above can create harsh shadows on walls and ceilings, while lamps provide soft, directional light without casting too much glare onto surfaces below them. This allows for better reading or TV watching while still maintaining a sense of coziness or elegance, depending on what kind of lampshade you use.

Additionally, because lampshades are not enshrouded in a direct cone of glowing light like overhead fixtures, they don’t create the sense of getting closed off or boxed in. This helps make any room feel airier and inviting. Another benefit, lampshades, provide greater task lighting due to their orientation. Because table lamps are generally placed at eye level (or below), they can distribute light better where it’s needed most.

2. Hang a Chandelier in Your Dining Room

Making your home look more inviting is as easy as installing a chandelier in the dining room. Your dining table deserves to get highlighted with the perfect lighting fixture, and this simple installation will do just that. Here’s what you need:

· A pendant light kit

· A cordless drill

· Extension cord

No matter how it gets generated, the lighting in your home can have an enormous effect on the ambiance of different rooms. Hanging a chandelier will cast light downwards onto the table below and create an intimate atmosphere perfect for dinner parties or other social gatherings.

3. Add Under-Cabinet Lighting

You’ve probably noticed that most kitchens get lit by overhead fluorescent or incandescent lights. Not only do these types of light make your kitchen feel cold and sterile, but they also cast shadows on the countertops and cabinets, making it difficult to see what you’re doing. This is, it is important to add under-cabinet lighting.

Under-cabinet lighting will make your kitchen more inviting and help you prepare food better because it provides a continuous source of a well-lit workspace. The best part about this type of lighting is that it can get installed at any time without having to replace other fixtures in the room.

4. Add Dimmers to Your Lighting Fixtures

The most important role of light in your home is to create a sense of comfort and safety. Lighting can help to make spaces seem larger or smaller, darker or lighter, more formal or informal. Adding dimmers will enable you to control the brightness and ambiance of each space according to what you need at any given time. This way, you won’t have glaring lights in one room when it’s just for reading, but they might be completely appropriate for cooking dinner with friends in another part of the house.

Lighting is the first thing people notice when they enter your home. It can have a big impact on how welcoming it feels to guests, so if you’re looking for some tips on making your lighting more inviting, the above tips will be of much benefit.

Brooke Chaplan

Brooke Chaplan is a freelance writer and blogger. She lives and works out of her home in Los Lunas, For more information contact Brooke via Twitter @BrookeChaplan.