Lighting is an essential part of any space. Whether you’re designing a living room, bedroom, kitchen, or bathroom. Lighting will play a major role in how your space looks and feels. When you have a brand new home you’re often starting with a blank canvas. You get the keys and you are left alone to turn your new home into a show home. But where do you begin? Follow our guide below on lighting a new home.
Choose the Right Lighting to make your new home shine.
There are several different types of light fitting available today. You’ll need to choose between functions required for each space. Often brand-new homes the ceiling may have recessed lighting in a couple of rooms often used in bathrooms and kitchens. However, everywhere else is plastic and very boring. You may consider supplementing this with a decorative light to enhance the visual appeal of your home. But where should you begin when funds are tight and know-how is low?
It’s not too difficult to enliven your home and make it better than the show home by adding nice lights. Doing everything at once is a financial stretch. But what makes the biggest difference and which lights should you change up?
1. Bathroom Lighting for New Homes
Bathrooms in new homes are normally beautifully fitted all new and perfect. But they can be a little lacking in the wow factor department. The show home most likely had mirror lights and wall lights whereas the finished bathroom you get may be a little more basic. Don’t worry it’s simple enough to create a show-stopping vanity area with a few extra lights or impressive mirrors. A must is a good quality ceiling light, choose a bathroom-safe version these have a double layer of protection against water getting into the fitting. It’s important your ceiling light fitting is IP44 this rating suits most bathrooms in new homes where modern wiring is present.
If you can’t stretch to the expenditure of a new bathroom light just yet, these lovely little portables lights bring a little glow and help personalise your new home very effectively.
2. Kitchen Lighting for New Homes
In a newly built home, the kitchen lighting as we’ve previously mentioned has very basic recessed lights. These are great for small kitchens, so that’s a tick if your kitchen is compact but if you have a larger room, a breakfast bar or a kitchen table a decorative feature light will bring the space to life and inject some much-needed style. New homes are often all the same add lighting, wallpaper and your decorative touch will elevate it from the others
3. Install a different exterior Light.
If you’re looking to improve the lighting in your home and elevate it beyond the rest of the homes on the new development, consider installing a different exterior Light at the front of your property. This may seem like a needless expense but it signals to the neighbours you have style. All the exterior lights on the estate are likely to be the same and a change of that single light really does show personality. Often developers go for cheaper traditional lanterns, nothing wrong with that but a most modern look is a better look don’t you agree? The removed light can be refitted at the back of the house.
Explore Modern Lights for Front doors of House
4. Add Extra Lighting to Areas That Need it.
To make sure you have enough light in every area of your home, install extra lights where needed. Table lamps and floor lamps are great for bringing in personality as well as extra light and electrical work are not required. There’s a whole host of plug-in lamps even plug-in wall lights.
5. Upgrade the Downstairs Lights
Prioritise lighting downstairs and put a ceiling light fitting in the living room, dining room and hallway. Downstairs lighting makes the biggest impact and this is what your guest will see first. Bedrooms can be done later.
- Explore Modern Ceiling Lights for the Living Room.
- Discover Modern Ceiling Lights for the Dining Room
- Modern Hall Lights
6. Hold back the Light to gain control.
You can also use dimmers to control the brightness of individual light bulbs. Dimmers allow you to adjust the brightness of each light individually, so you can turn down the lights when wishing to change the mood or have it brighter for cleaning and tasks.
Explore dimmable light bulbs.
7. Create an Ambient Mood with Accent Lighting.
If you’re looking to add a little ambience to your space, consider using accent lighting. This type of lighting creates a soft glow throughout a room. It can be used as a decorative feature or to highlight certain areas of interest.
So what exactly is accent lighting?
Accent lighting can be a table lamp on a sideboard or a concealed light on top of a tall unit. Using a couple of light sources on a piece of furniture can create an attractive feature in its own right. Differing heights of lamps or a lamp with fretwork or light and shade can afford the space a feeling of depth. This little trick of adding depth of perspective is worth doing. This hack pays dividends especially well for use in smaller spaces making the overall scheme much more appealing, what you don’t have in the size you can make up for it with character.
8. Incorporate Shades into Your Design.
You can also use lampshades to soften the light in bedrooms. They come in various styles and materials, so there’s something out there for everyone. A ceiling lampshade is relatively cheap lighting, easy to install and with a quick win your bedrooms start to look as good as the show home.
9. Patio Lights
If there’s no light next to the patio area, it can render that space unusable in the evenings. Often developers will put a light up, but not always. If your developer didn’t do that you can still have light without getting an electrician involved. here’s how.
Solar wall-mounted lights only require you to screw them to the wall. Not sure if you can do that, hey guys we get it! It is sometimes daunting making a hole in your new house especially if you are new to DIY. Be brave! Solar are the easiest light to fit and the results are very impressive.
Portable Lamps are safe for outdoors and can be USB charged and taken outside when you go outdoors and plugged in to recharge when you go in for the evening. Useful to take outside when you take the dog out in the garden for his last pee of the evening as they are more elegant than a torch. Hey, why not be more glamorous when doing everyday homeowner tasks, after all, you do live in a swanky new home.
Battery Lights like these little jar styles are super cute and can be used as occasional outdoor lighting or in. It may be worth having rechargeable batteries as they are so charming you’ll use them everywhere on the dining table when you have a bath and as a night light. You’ll find so many uses a rechargeable battery will save you buying new batteries every day.
