Humans, by nature, are creatures of light. For centuries, our ancestors thrived under the sun during the day and at night they hovered close to the hearths for warmth and protection.
Our relationship today with light and lighting may be as complex as our idea of house and home living. This is why in this article, we’ll explore why, what, and where we can have lighting to make a difference. Also, don’t forget to follow our guideline on your lighting options!
1. To See
Why do we need light? Ask your kids, even nephews and nieces, and chances are they’ll answer “to see!” We need light when we go about our activities, especially at night, so it’s a no-brainer why we should put lights all around the house, whether inside or outside. We want to see what we are doing whatever things we have at home, and where we are going. It’s no surprise why we panic and rush to order at sites like Blingle! when our room’s main bulb goes kaput.
2. For Health
Did you know that even blind people need light? Studies show that vision-impaired individuals make use of light for brain function. This suggests that lighting affects us not just through our eyes, it also reaches our brain through other channels. The presence of lighting, particularly blue light, helps increase alertness and wakefulness, so they can be ideal for work area and home office lighting.
On the other hand, warm and gentle ambient lights help reduce eye strain, which is why we usually see them in areas where we prefer to relax, like our bedroom, the dining area, or the living room. Not only are they there to enhance your mood, but also enhance the experience.
Want to get your family eating the healthier option? Don’t let them eat in the dim television or computer-lit living room or bedroom, but in your well-lit dining area. This is why we want a layered combination of warm accent lights and general lighting over our dining table. We want our family and guests to see well and enjoy the visual aspect of the food we serve.
3. For Wellness
Lighting helps increase brain activity and improves the sensory experience, so it is also no wonder that our lights are mood enhancers that help us reduce stress.
You’ve probably experienced it more than once in the different places you’ve been to: from restaurants that seem to let you just sit back and enjoy the food, to a slumber party with your BFFs or a campfire with the family. One thing is common between these three experiences: warm and diffused light, whether from the campfire, the twinkling lights or bedside lamps, or the candlelight and dinner lamps.
Ambient lamps, Edison bulbs, and many warm lamps have a soft and diffused glow that helps us relax. It’s basically a domino effect: less eye strain lets us relax our eye muscles and nearby facial muscles, less tension on facial muscles also reduces internal head pressure and, in a way, affects the rest of our body. Decorative living room lights, garden and landscape lighting, and dimmable room lights are good mood enhancers that could help you unwind, or even be relaxed before going to bed.
4. For Security
Since ancient times, we humans have associated darkness with danger. It’s only natural: most predators in the wild hunt well at night, like lions, tigers, and even mosquitoes! Today, of course, we may be far removed from such creatures but danger still lurks outdoors 一 from unsavory individuals to home security threats, to possible nighttime traffic problems. This is one of the main functions of outdoor lighting.
You’ll definitely want lights over your front door to keep you from falling over the porch. The lighting in your garden and your backyard will keep neighborhood critters like feral cats, dogs, or raccoons from making a mess in your backyard. Lighting over your yard and even your gate will also help motorists traverse safely as they pass by your area in the neighborhood. Besides, you wouldn’t want to bump and make a mess of your neighbor’s trash bins while driving into your garage, wouldn’t you?
5. Enhance the Atmosphere
What does the 4th of July, Halloween, and Christmas have in common besides being holidays? It’s the lights. Because lighting, whether indoor or outdoor, are mood enhancer, they are a quickly accessible alternative to regular decorations. Make use of silver screens on your windows and some shape cutouts, for example, and you get to make Halloween decorations already. Decorate the pathway and the trees with twinkling blue and red lights, and you can give your yard a festive 4th of July atmosphere.
6. Financial Aspect
Improving home lighting, like any other home remodeling project, requires some financial consideration, but done right, it gives both short and long-term benefits, including in the financial aspect.
Some of us, for example, do not have our very own home office, but we do desk work either in our bedrooms, our dining table, or heck, even the kitchen! If we include task lights among the other illumination fixtures in our favorite working area, it will help increase our productivity. In addition, properly designed and installed fixtures will let us save more in the long run since there would be fewer chances of maintenance, replacement, and repair.
Curb appeal is the overall attractiveness of your house and its surrounding area. Although most real estate campaigns occur during the daytime when lighting is not so much used, the fixtures around your home can still become a unique selling point. Plus, it’s not just the outdoor lighting that will draw people to your home 一 the interior fixtures play a major role, too.
Here’s more: good lighting, especially outdoor lighting, adds to the overall curb appeal of your home, so if you plan to sell your home in the future, it’s a good investment to consider. Besides, even if you eventually don’t want to sell your home, it still pays to become the neighborhood’s “ideal home”, right?
7. Fulfill your aesthetic sense
Whichever your reason is for improving the lighting in your home, there is one other reason that never hurts to add to your list: the need to fulfill your aesthetic sense. Let’s face it 一 like how we can be personally picky with the things we surround ourselves with, from cars to clothes, and even to people we hang out with 一 we want our home to reflect who we are and what our tastes are.
Humans have this need to achieve or fulfill our aesthetic senses, to the point that we even connect this achievement with how successful we are (just think of how the billionaires are able to enjoy collecting art!).
Improving lighting goes beyond practical reasons. It’s not just about adding illumination to the things we need to see around us. This is why it’s important to consult with the right people, whether interior decorators or lighting fixture professionals, in coming up with good home lighting, because in the long run, it also affects other aspects of our lives like our health, wellness, financial well-being, and eventually, our overall fulfillment. We are, after all, creatures of light.
