Residential Lighting

Good residential lighting can transform even the plainest of rooms into something truly special. Indeed, the play of light and shade over a flat surface is like painting with light. Except, you will find that a well-conceived lighting plan creates far more impact than a simple colour scheme.

Considering the illumination for an entire house is quite a daunting prospect, so you can browse our website for suggestions on a room-by-room basis and you will find dozens of inspirational schemes in our gallery. We also offer a lighting design service to aid you, no matter how large or small your project. But, before you start, here are a few basic dos and don’ts to take into account in your plan.

Don’t fixate on the hardware. It is easy to get sidetracked by the design of the luminaire, but you also need to think about how it illuminates your space.

Light is invisible. What you see – what is important – is its impact on a surface. Concealing your luminaires makes your light source invisible too, resulting in a particularly stylish and exciting effect.

Try not to over-illuminate your space. Remember, it is the contrast between luminosity and darkness that makes a room look interesting.

Light can be thrown up, as well as down. Whether you are using up or downlights, position them to allow the glow to play over the walls too. Lighting the vertical planes makes a space appear generally bigger and brighter.

Use layers of light. In addition to your ambient scheme, layer accent and/or task lighting. In fact, in some task focussed rooms, kitchens and bathrooms for example, it is best to actually start with the latter since you may find that you don’t need background illumination at all.

Don’t put all the lights in one room on the same circuit. You will probably want to use the different layers of lighting at different times depending on the task at hand.

Consider the colour of your illumination. LED lighting now comes in a whole range of different ‘shades of white’, from warm, yellow-white to really cool blue-white. This is referred to as the temperature of the light (although LED lights are always cool to touch). Colour temperature is measured in Kelvin and the higher the number the cooler the colour of the light.

And think about whether you want your lights to be dimmable, too. Some of our lights have a dim-to-warm feature, which means that at their brightest they provide a neutral light, around 3000 Kelvin, but warm to around 1800 Kelvin (similar in tone to candlelight) when dimmed.

Finally, consider the benefits of a Smart home lighting system. With a Collingwood system you don’t have to start from scratch because we can make your dumb lights smart.

And, whatever you do, don’t forget your garden. Lighting your outdoor spaces will not only make them more usable, but it will truly bring your home to life.