How can one brighten up the living room?
Whenever you’re headed to the living room it’s either because you want to relax, have a light conversation with your favorite people or maybe to gather everyone at one place to discuss something important. In all three of the mentioned cases, the environment around you matters a lot. The environment around you in any living room includes the setting of the main furniture, small accessories to decorate the room, the fragrance of the room and most important the lightning of the room. The lightning at any place can play very brilliantly with the aesthetic effects and can do wonders with your mood and mind, either it makes your mood or spoils it, or either it can make you productive or very lazy.
The psychological effect of lighting
According to different studies, it has been found that dim lighting can contribute towards depression, vitamin D deficiency and can also upset your energy levels. Lighting can even affect your appetite that is how much food you eat, the quantity of food, the pace at which you eat it and in fact the flavors you prefer can vary with different lighting. Yes, believe it or not, that’s how the light around you plays tricks with your brain. A very prominent example of this light phenomenon is how our productivity varies throughout the day, how we are the most productive during the day when sunlight is on its peak but how we start becoming lazy and our brain slows down as soon as the sun sets.
Many people fail to realize this very essential fact while designing the interior of a living room and ends up with the most pathetic lighting for the most important part of the house. Most suitable lighting for a living room is to have bright lighting which can be achieved through a million ways. There are a number of factors which contribute towards this bright lighting, for example, the size of furniture and color of furniture, the number of lights in the room and their intensity, the wall paint of the room, the number of windows in the room, curtains hanging on the window and their color, small accessories and their color combination, the flooring and its color, and many other factors.
Sources of light
Bright light in any room can be achieved by two prominent light sources, one is the natural source of light and the other is artificial lighting. There is a common misconception that one cannot control the natural light in the room but now with all the modern equipment and techniques, both, the natural and the artificial light are in fact very much in our own hands.
Let’s now take a look at multiple simple beginner steps to lighten up or make bright a living room:
- Color in the room
To brighten up a room, colors of wall play an important role as mentioned earlier. For this, we should go for light colors which may include eggshell white, bone white, Dutch white, ash grey, pale periwinkle, pale turquoise, Alice blue, anti-flash white, beige, bisque, cosmic latte, cream, floral white, ivory and of course white. These are very few of the light colors mentioned from a large number of colors which would be best for the interior of the living room. The purpose of using light colors on walls is that they do not absorb any kind of light, in fact, they bounce back the light incoming towards them to other objects and this phenomenon of bouncing back is much known as reflection. More reflection means automatic brightness in the room. To add more effect to it we can even go for light colored furniture also which will not only help in making the room bright but will also give a very classy overall look to your living room.
- Lighting of walls
Even if the color of the walls is very light do not forget to wash the walls with light. This does not only make the walls reflect back more light but also will highlight the details of your wall such as any design or some frame etc. For this purpose add pot light in the corner of the roof so it may light up the side walls. If there is a lack of windows in the room, consider getting scones shades which will not only scatter light downward but upward too. Table lamps can also be brought into very much use.
- Furniture
It is one of the most vital things that make up the room. And it can contribute a great deal in making the room as bright as we want or as dark as we want, all is up to us. The size and color of the furniture matter a lot in changing the overall appearance of the room. To go for a brighter appearance we must choose small sized furniture, furniture that acquires less space and light colored furniture. The light color will again help in reflection as mentioned earlier while small size furniture will block less light and that’s all we need.
- Counter with black
This might seem odd but works with hundred percent guarantee. For highlights add some hints of black or any dark color. It will add contrast to the room and pop up the light covered areas. Objects that can be used in dark colors may include photo frame, chair or small tables, etc. More of an amazing look can be given if these objects are sharp or linear.
