The Four Aspects To Consider When Lighting Art

Artwork resulting from hours and hours of contemplation, detailed work, and refinement should have the opportunity to be best appreciated through appropriate lighting. Elements within lighting play important parts in how artwork is featured and conveyed. In general, there are four aspects to consider when lighting art:

Ambient lighting: When you pick the light to accent your artwork, the general rule of thumb is to pick a light that is 3 times as bright or intense as your ambient lighting. Ambient lighting is the room's general lighting.This ratio makes it so that the artwork appears just right - not too dull and not too bright.  A good way to go about it is to first pick a light that best illuminates your art and then proceed to choose your ambient lighting. For information on how to light for ambiance, figure out how to calculate lighting for a room.

Color temperatures: Some pieces of art are sensitive to heat, infrared radiation (IR), and ultra violet (UV). That is why one should take great care in choosing the right light to cast over these works of art as well as keep them out of direct sunlight.  In this case, choose lighting that have special UV and IR ray blocking lens, keep the lighting an appropriate distance from the piece, while considering which light color is best for your art work (something cooler or warmer).

Color rendering index:  Color Rendering index (CRI) is a measurement of a light source's ability to stay true to color ranging from 1 to 100 where 100 is most true. In lighting art, the higher the CRI the more desirable it is.

Light positioning: How a light is positioned affects how artwork is highlighted.  A light directed at a lower angle better features texture within the art whereas higher angles is better for encompassing larger works.  In general, reduce glare by positioning your light at a 30 degree angle from the piece of art.

Halogen Track Lighting: A popular choice for lighting art

Halogen lighting has a high CRI which helps in allowing artwork to be displayed at its more true state and color. In addition to its less harmful rays, halogen lighting is a better option than incandescent and fluorescent lighting when it comes to lighting art. Track lighting is popular for lighting art because of its ability to achieve task and accent lighting with the option of offering energy efficiency through its low voltage variant. Therefore, the combination halogen track lighting makes it a good choice for artwork lighting. Go here for more information on what track rail lighting is. 

LED Track Lighting: A step up in artwork lighting

An even better option for lighting artwork than halogen track lighting is LED lighting often used in high end restaurants and art galleries. Utilizing LED lighting technology, a durable and energy efficient light source packaged in a track lighting form yields a stylish and earth-friendly lighting which works great on lighting artwork.  

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Tips For Lighting Your Kitchen

As the "heart" of most households, your kitchendeserves to be inviting and well-lit! Never underestimate the importance of quality kitchen light fixtures in a renovation. After all, the hard work you put into designing your kitchen should be illuminated to really catch the eye.

For the best results, install kitchen light fixtures in layers (you can learn more about the Lighting Layer Method here). Be sure to provide plenty of general/ ambient, task, and accent lighting.

General Lighting

• Flush Mounts: Highly affordable and available in traditional & contemporary styles, these are always a solid choice for kitchen lighting. 

• Kitchen Island Lights: These chandeliers have a special elongated style especially for use over kitchen islands, and work great for general/ ambient lighting.

• Wall Sconces: Does your kitchen have a wall or corner that’s particularly dark? A wall sconce is a wonderful solution, providing general lighting and a touch of pizzazz.

Task Lighting

• Mini Pendants: These kitchen light fixtures (miniature versions of pendant lights) work wonderfully over a kitchen island or bar, and provide much-needed task lighting in the kitchen. One of the latest trends is using staggered mini pendants over a small breakfast table.

• Ceiling Pendants: To provide a truly focused light, choose a style that emits light mainly through the bottom. These work great over your kitchen sink, or any other area where you perform frequent tasks.

Accent Lighting

• Under Cabinet Lights: Draw attention to your backsplash or granite countertops with under cabinet lights! They are fairly easy to install, and available in strip or "puck" varieties. There are also under cabinet lights that can plug directly into an outlet.

• Track Lighting: A hot trend in kitchen light fixtures, track lighting is very versatile and can be used for both general and accent lighting. Simply point the track head at the item in the kitchen you wish to spotlight!

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A Lighting Design Formula To Turn Your Backyard Into A Dream Entertainment Space

Now, when the stars come out, you don't have to go inside. With the right lighting, you can expand the use of your yard exponentially. And don't just think tiki torches and patio lanterns - although those are great, too. These days, everything from spot to flood lights comes in different shapes, sizes and wattages to suit a variety of outdoor decorating styles.

And remember: Take the same approach to lighting your exterior as you would your interior, combining several types of lighting - ambient, accent, task and decorative - to set a mood, whether it's warm, intimate and romantic or spectacular and dramatic. Like on any good stage set done properly, lighting serves both functional and aesthetic purposes: increasing safety and bringing out the beauty of your landscape's details and architecture. Here, a primer on how to create enchanted spaces from summer into fall. 

Entertainment lighting
Illuminated plant pots and solar lights that look like patio lanterns, or that are encased within stepping stones, are creative and decorative ways to light your yard for outdoor entertaining. One can also attach lights to a patio umbrella or string fairy lights along the sides and top of your gazebo to simulate a starry night. Set trios of hurricane lamps of differing sizes on side tables to create a soft glow, or hang a dozen flickering votives in jars from your trees to make it look like the fireflies have come out to play. Whatever lights or lamps you choose, watch how they quickly transform the open space into an intimate backyard room once the sun sets.

Downlighting
Downlighting creates soft illumination from above. To create a dappled moonlight effect, position a wide flood spotlight high in a tree, angled down. It will brighten branches and leaves in its path and cast shadows on the ground. For a full-moon effect, place lights pointing up from the base of the tree and down from the top.

Uplighting
Uplighting acts the same way as focused accent lighting inside your home. By illuminating objects from below, you create dramatic focal points. Save it for garden sculptures, shrubs or trees that you want to highlight. The effect you achieve depends on the angle of the light: If you want to emphasize the texture of a tree trunk, install lights near the base of the tree. If you want to illuminate the leaves, install lights farther away. Place lights behind plants, trees or landscape art to cast shadows and emphasize their silhouettes, or illuminate a lighter-coloured wall or fence behind them.

Area lights and Path lighting
Similar to ambient light indoors, area light is general floodlighting that washes larger spaces in a soft glow. Use it on sections of lawn, hedges, patios or conversation corners. Then approach the lighting of your driveways, walkways and steps as task lighting, which provides both safety and beauty. Likewise, path lighting. Position a series of downlights on alternating sides of your walk or steps to ensure light spreads horizontally in muted pools. The best bets are safe and affordable low-voltage fixtures that are less than two feet high.

Planned wisely, lighting brings depth and dimension to your yard, creating romantic outdoor dining nooks, turning ordinary plants into art and adding drama to your home's exterior architecture. Much of its beauty, however, is its ability to stretch time: Because, as we know, a summer yard that's illuminated properly and beautifully encourages lingering long past one's usual bedtime.

Lighting tips

• The secret to lighting is to contrast. Play with the light and shadows. Illuminating your whole yard is overwhelming and dilutes the visual impact. Determine focal points, whether it's the patio table on the deck, a door, fountain or tree. Don't choose too many. A couple is enough.
• Be careful with colour. White light is best and makes plants look healthy. Yellow tones can make green plants look sick.
• Incandescent bulbs provide natural, warm light. You'll get whiter, brighter light from quartz-type bulbs, whereas tungsten halogens are lower voltage, last longer and use less electricity, but they get extremely hot.
• Low-voltage and energy-efficient lights like LEDs on a timer are great. Solar-powered lights are good, too, but may run out of power before the end of a long night, so don't use them in key spaces where lighting is essential.  www.desertlighting.com

Help in Choosing the Perfect Chandelier Size for your Room

Choose the right size for your room.  Measure the width of your room. The chandelier should be two inches in diameter for every foot of width. A 12-foot wide dining room, then, would work best with a chandelier that’s 24 inches in diameter; a 10-foot wide space would call for a chandelier approximately 18 to 24 inches in diameter. Other experts offer a similar formula: Add the dimensions of the room together, and that number in inches is the width of the chandelier that best fits the room. So a 10-by-12 foot room would call for a 22-inch wide chandelier.

Consider too, the chandelier’s style in selecting the right size. For example, if a chandelier is extremely ornate, even if it’s smaller than what you might imagine, it can work in a large room! The ornate features give it a different kind of weight.

For eating areas, consider the size and shape of your table in picking the right chandelier. The chandelier should be approximately one-third the width of the table. So a 5-foot round dining table would call for a chandelier with a diameter of 20 inches. Oval or rectangular tables can take a slightly wider chandelier, such as a pendant style with two or more pendants. A round chandelier, the most classic shape, is terrific with a round table.

Hang the chandelier so that the bottom of the chandelier is roughly 30 inches from the top of the table. That ensures that the chandelier doesn’t encroach on your view of your dining companions, and it gives you space to fit a vase of flowers or another tall centerpiece.  Most people hang chandeliers way too high. Also, be sure that the chandelier is centered over the table and not in the middle of the room. If you’ve got a hutch or sideboard against one wall, as most people do, your table will likely be pulled out slightly from the exact center of the room, and everything will look off-kilter if the chandelier hangs exactly dead center.

Think about how much light you need for your space. The chandelier is usually only one part of the lighting. In a dining room, pot lights in the ceiling or track lights can add extra wattage if you use the space for projects and homework as well as candlelit dinners. Perimeter lighting, such as sconces or buffet lamps, can add even more illumination. In most cases, it’s best to put your chandelier on a dimmer switch, so you can change the intensity of the lighting for various uses.

Don’t forget that a chandelier is not just for the dining room. Chandeliers are being used in every room in the house.  We love how they dress up a kitchen, bathroom or living room.

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Recessed Lighting Applications

Homeowners and design savvy builders have come to appreciate the artistic value bestowed by the abundance of lighting fixture styles that can be incorporated to create uniform design schemes throughout homes and businesses. Recessed lighting has been around since the 1950s, but has recently been gaining popularity as an alternative to traditional light fixtures due its versatility. Recessed lighting is a significant component of the lighting design in many residential and commercial buildings, offering a visually pleasing while functional source of light that can be used in a variety of applications. 

What is recessed lighting? Recessed light fixtures illuminate from just above the ceiling surface, rather than protruding down in full view. This flexible style of home lighting gives designers the opportunity to incorporate specific levels of lighting to achieve the desired ambiance while directing focus to the intended highlights of a room. Recessed lighting can be implemented as the sole light source for rooms and hallways, or can produce a broad spectrum ambience throughout an area that serves as a “backdrop” to other, more targeted sources of light. 

Many decorative lighting arrangements, such as wall sconces and chandeliers, are artistically striking but often do not produce practical, functional lighting to meet the needs of a household or business. Recessed lighting can be used in combination with such lighting fixtures to provide a sheath of light throughout the room while highlighting intricate details of a decorative chandelier or sconce. Recessed lighting can also be used to illuminate an eye-catching design element of a room, such as wall art, an accent wall, a china cabinet or other piece of furniture. 

Using the appropriate bulbs in a recessed lighting fixture is as important as the fixture itself. The size and voltage of a bulb will affect the amount and intensity of light that it produces. Recessed fixtures in a fairly small bathroom would not need to be the same diameter as fixtures designed to illuminate a larger room. On the other hand, a bathroom would likely necessitate a brighter (higher voltage) bulb to produce the desired level of visibility than a hallway whose primary purpose is to provide ambient, dim lighting to impart a softer effect. 

Whether recessed lighting will be used in a bedroom for reading or in a kitchen to supply optimal illumination for cooking, the intended purpose of a room is a significant consideration in determining the type of lighting that should be implemented.

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How to Compare Light Bulbs

Compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs) and light emitting diodes (LEDs) have become increasingly common lighting options, replacing traditional incandescent bulbs in many homes. CFLs use mercury to emit light rather than the tungsten filament used in incandescent bulbs. LEDs use semi-conductors and have no moving parts, making them very reliable. When comparing bulbs, look at the light output, energy usage, lifespan, color and cost. Here are some instructions:

1. • 1
     Compare the light output of the light bulbs, usually measured in lumens. You can estimate the number of lumens your bulb needs by estimating the number of lumens your room needs based on the size of the room, the use of the room and how many bulbs will light the room.
   • 2
     Compare the energy usage, usually measured in watts. Before CFLs and LEDs, watts were a fairly good indicator of how bright a light would be because all bulbs were about equally efficient. Because CFLs and LEDs are much more efficient, however, it is no longer an effective comparison of light output. Instead chose a bulb that uses the least amount of energy to produce the amount of light you need.
   • 3
     Compare the lifespan of the bulbs, which is measured in hours. LEDs have the longest lifespan followed by CFLs. According to the Department of Energy, CFLs last about 10 times as long as incandescent bulbs and LEDs last about 25 times as long.
   • 4
     Compare the color of the lights. LED bulbs are not as proficient as CFLs or incandescent bulbs are at producing a warm white light.
   • 5
     Compare the cost of the light bulbs. Even though CFLs may be more expensive to buy, the U.S. Department of Energy claims that they can save money over incandescent bulbs because they use less energy.

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When It Comes To Lighting Your Home, Identify!

Lighting Your Home

Lighting can make a big difference in the interior environment of your home. Good lighting used properly helps you to see better and perform tasks more easily. It also provides safety, security and a sense of comfort. Lighting and lighting controls also provide you with the flexibility to adjust and adapt the mood and ambiance of your home.

Lighting fixtures are ideal, and often inexpensive, accessories to supplement the interior design of your home. With an unlimited range of styles, shapes, colors and sizes, lighting fixtures can add sparkle and a final, finishing touch to your décor.

Properly used lighting should complement your lifestyle and meet your family's needs. When planning your home's lighting, keep these tips in mind:

• Identify the activities that occur in each room (reading, food preparation, hobby work, grooming, laundry, homework, etc.).
• Identify the mood or ambiance that you want to create in each space.
• Identify any decorative elements you wish to emphasize, such as artwork or wall textures.
• Identify areas with dark wall colors and finishes. These areas absorb more light than those with lighter finishes, so supplemental lighting may be required.
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