January 10, 2012 | Posted In Interior Design

Style Editor: Illuminating Spaces Set the Mood

Don’t be left in the dark when selecting luxurious lighting fixtures for your kitchen and bathroom. There’s a plethora of glowing options right at your fingertips and available at area home improvement and specialty stores. Interior lighting is essential and gives a room form, texture and comfort, accentuates artwork and creates an ambiance. Lighting is also a decorative device that makes any room shine.

Radiating Rooms

I started to question if the lighting in my home was adequate, too bright or dim or at its best after reading about lighting in Better Homes and Gardens magazine and HGTV’s website. There’s an abundance of lighting options in the marketplace but the goal is to purchase lighting devices that provide the best results and work well in your home. And matching the lighting fixtures with furnishings in different areas of the home takes the décor element to a whole new level.

Pendant lighting in your kitchen is sensible and striking, spices up the room, comes in many shapes, styles and colors and provides additional lighting in your cooking zone. Colorful pendant lights can brighten and liven kitchen spaces. Using three to five pendant lights will provide sufficient lighting in your kitchen. Home Depot’s Checkolite Art Glass 1-Light 72-inch Hanging Lava Red Mini Pendant Light is sassy but stylish, has a European flair and lightens wonderfully.

CheckoliteArtGlass-lavared-hanging-400h

Control your kitchen’s dining room lighting with a dimmer switch. The dimmer will help satisfy your lighting needs when desiring low-lighting during dinnertime and brighter lights if the table is being used for homework or crafts during other parts of the day.

A good lighting plan in the bathroom provides a copious amount of light for shaving or putting on makeup and a relaxing atmosphere. Having recessed lighting fixtures above the mirror isn’t a good idea because it casts shadows on the face. The best way to achieve a balanced light across the face is by positioning sconces on either side of the mirror.

Another means is by having lighting above the vanity. Vanity lights work the hardest by illuminating the head and face when grooming and should be placed 75 to 80 inches above the floor. One example is Restoration Hardware’s Modern Triple Sconce. The contemporary lighting fixture has squared edges and bull-nose finials and features a frosted-glass shade and a box back-plate, uses 60 watt maximum bulbs and hangs vertically with the frosted-glass shades pointing up or down.