Lighting the interior of your home can be one of the biggest interior design issues. The lighting in each room has different requirements and can impact the comfort and performance within it depending on what it is used for. Each room will have different color temperature requirements, lighting requirements and brightness requirements. In order to identify each room needs you will need to understand the room’s function and size. Once the room’s function and size have been determined, the correct light or bulb can be installed.

The Correct Lighting With The Correct Room

In terms of lighting they can be categorized into 3 main types; general, accent and task lighting. Depending on which room you’re lighting, you’re going to need specific types of lighting matching the room’s function or a mix of all three.

Each Room's Function and Lighting

Kitchen: The kitchen is a communal area that also has tasks performed in it such as cooking, etc. so you’re going to need a mix of lighting effects. For lighting a kitchen you’re going to mix 3 of the main types of lighting using different styles of lights to give added effects to the room.

Kitchen Island: The island is going to need task or general lighting depending on what the island is used for. For task-oriented islands go for task lighting effects from pendant lights 30-36 inches above the island to get the most natural lighting effect.

Under cabinet lighting: The general lighting you’ll have in your home will cause the cupboards to cast shadows over your work surfaces, so under cabinet lights may be the solution. The most popular lights for under cabinet lighting are LED strip lights, puck lights and LED downlights. Your under-cabinet lights don’t need to be overly bright but a color temperature of around 5000K would be enough to produce some great task lighting for preparing meals under.

Kitchen Ceiling Lighting: For general lighting in your kitchen the best approach would be higher and brighter to fill the large space with light. There are 2 ways of illuminating your kitchen with very high and bright lights. The first is to use recessed downlights, as these are the highest you can get and will be able to flood the room with light. However, the drawback to recessed downlights is that you will need to buy many, as their lighting angle is focused and directional. The second option is to use a flush mount ceiling light. This output wider softer light that can illuminate wider spaces. These may be more beneficial to smaller kitchens that require less lumens.

Living Room: Lighting a living room will involve a large amount of general lighting and maybe some accent lighting ideas to add comfort to the room. First of all the general lighting of the living room will need to be in the range of around 1000-3000 lumens in order to provide enough light to see well but not flood the room and keep you alert such as the kitchen. The living room is there for comfort and soft light. Low to medium brightness with a color temperature of 2700K-3000K, lower orange/yellow light. In order to produce higher melatonin levels in your body throughout the evening to prepare you for bed.

Reducing Eye Strain In The Living Room

Televisions produce their own light so you don’t want conflict between your general lights and this, the glare from conflicting lights can strain your eyes while you’re focusing on the TV. The best way to eradicate this problem is to have no lights directly shining onto your TV. Bias lighting would be the best option for fixing this issue. Bias lighting is a weak light source that will go behind your screen or TV on the edge of the display and produce like on the wall behind it. In order to make the TV appear lighter in a dark room without the glare. For bias lighting you will want to look for LED strips that produce a beam of 6500K.

Bedroom Lighting: Layering the lights and having dimmers within the bedroom can be key in promoting better sleep. Falling asleep is about easing into it from a relaxed state and having just 1 bright light source won’t help this. The amount of brightness for a bedroom ranges anywhere between 2000-4000 lumens, depending on how well lit you like your bedroom. 2000 lumens with a soft 2700K light will bring a soft glow to your room, definitely promoting relaxation and sleep. However, if you do prefer to have a more vibrant room you can take the brightness up to 4000lumens with 3000K color temperature. This will bring more overall brightness and intensity to the room, while still giving you comfort. If you are looking to fill the room with a higher amount of brightness, one way of reducing the intensity would be to use a number of bulbs, in order to spread out the intensity.

What Are The Best Indoor Home Lights?

Now we've covered the 3 mains rooms in the home that require layers of specific lighting, we can go into what would be the best bulbs for these rooms. Depending on the size of the room will determine your numbers of lumens. However, a lot of rooms especially the 3 main types of rooms will need a range of 3000-6000 lumens.

SGLEDs 22W & 27W LED bulbs produce 3000lm and 4000lm in twin packs to provide bright general lighting for each main room in your home. For the living room the 22W 3000K warm bulb will provide more than enough soft lighting to help bring comfort and relaxation to your nights in.

The 27W SGLEDs

The lumens output for these is a little higher, maybe for larger rooms or kitchens that require a large amount of task bright 5000K lighting. Both of these bulbs have technological advantages over their competitors too. Their use of ceramic heat sinks. COC technology, chip on ceramic. SGLEDS use of COC technology means the lights require no internal fans, PC boards or thermal adhesives. COC combined with the hollow body of the bulbs, means their heat dissipation is more efficient than other LED bulbs on the market.

Interior home lighting is about brightness, comfort and cost-effectiveness. SGLEDs bulbs bring all three of these to your home and more! Your home can tell the story of who you are and what you love, and we can illuminate them!