How to choose the right architectural lighting fixtures and fittings

Lighting is an important feature of your home and it’s one of the major decisions you’ll have when decorating. It is a staple in any interior space. It is also seen in any space, whether it is domestic or commercial, large or small. In fact, lighting is vital in how any space and environment is able to work and function for others. To add to that, there is a whole cottage industry now of lighting designers and design teams able to help bring a space a lot more to life.

Obviously, lighting serves a purpose so you want to make sure you have right amount of light for your space. But it also plays a big role in your room’s design. Light fixtures range from blingy and statement-making to simple, and the lighting you choose can really influence the overall design of your room.

Looking for the perfect overall fixtures to meet your needs

Searching for the perfect light fixture can be a daunting task, as you sift through hundreds of options looking for the right style, comparing quality and budget. I know when I was picking out lighting for our home I spent hours so it was definitely a labor of love. But it’s always worth it in the end when you find the light fixture that is the right size and style for your home.

Ambient lighting

Ambient lighting is the main source of light in a room, most often coming from an overhead light or recessed lighting. It’s the source that provides the most amount of light. Utilitarian rooms like kitchens and bathrooms generally need more light than hallways, living rooms, and dining rooms or any other area of your home. There are calculations you can do to see how many lumens or watts your space needs based on its size that you can then convert into light bulbs when you are deciding what light fixtures to get for your space. It’s important to have the proper amount of light in a room because there is nothing worse than a kitchen that is poorly lit so you can’t see what you’re doing when chopping veggies.

Installing task lighting

Task lighting is made for specific activities or uses such as sconces for nighttime reading, a desktop lamp, or a light above a vanity mirror. It lights up the space even more, and more directly, than what an ambient light can do. We have sconces next to our bed and not only is it nice to have when reading at night, but it also adds to the design and adds a nice touch.

Very important – make sure you buy the right sized fixtures

When deciding what light fixture to get, you need to first consider size. You want a fixture that is big enough for your space that doesn’t look proportionally small. For ambient lighting, measure the length and width of the room. Then add them together and convert to inches, and that’s the ideal size for a lighting fixture.  For example, an 18-inch wide fixture would be ideal for an 8×10 foot room.

When figuring out the properly sized pendant for your kitchen island, measure the length of your island. Then, decide if you like the look of 2 or 3 pendants. If you go with 3 pendants, the pendant size can be smaller, but if you go with 2 pendants, they should be more oversized. After measuring the island, take into account the amount of space needed between each pendant. A good rule of thumb is to space pendants about 30 inches apart. Then you can go from there and calculate what size of pendants would fit above your island, leaving 6 inches of clearance on both ends of the island so no pendant hangs over the edge.

Working to the right lighting style

One of the biggest questions around choosing lighting is what type of style to get, and do they all have to match? My recommendation is that lighting should play up the other elements in your room. A room can have a couple different metal finishes, but you want to choose one dominant metal to use throughout your home. For example, it’s perfectly ok to use a combination of both matte black and brass metal accents in your home for cabinet hardware, sink faucets, and door knobs, but choose a dominant and stick with it. That can help you decide which colour to go with for your light fixture. So, if you have brass hardware in your kitchen, a black sink faucet, and brass curtain rods, and black is the dominant metal in your home, you’ll probably want to choose black pendants for above your kitchen island.

Make sure the lighting all works in sync with one another

If you are choosing lighting for an open concept living and dining room, the lighting should compliment each other but it doesn’t have to be the exact same. Find a common element among the lighting in both rooms and play that up. Lighting is a super fun and relatively easy way to add drama or make a statement in any room. Sometimes the most simple and basic rooms just need a cool chandelier to give it that punch it needs. While nice light fixtures are a bit of an investment, especially when you need multiples, they are easy to fix in about an hour, unlike painting a room which can take hours.

Overall – what you need to know

A lot of time and effort go into selecting the perfect lights that are right for you and the space they’re going in. For instance, you need to make sure you’ve chosen lights with an actual functional purpose, with the right amount of illumination shining off them, and with a stylistic element to add to the room’s aesthetic. You can’t put a simple, yet modern ceiling light in a room full of antique furniture, it just won’t match. With this in mind, don’t spend endless sums of money and then assemble your architectural lighting in the incorrect manner. Just spend your money in the correct ways and you won’t go wrong.