Light in your home

Lighting your home

Think about how light is arranged and how it comes into the house, its intensity and colour, where it falls in each room and how that suits the way the family lives. Think, too, about how sustainable it is, what it costs to run, and the price and upkeep of the lamps and bulbs you buy. Lighting plays a crucial part in your life. Here’s why.

Lighting is a fundamental part of how you decorate your home. When you design your rooms with it in mind, you can create warm, welcoming spaces in tune with you, where your personality comes through and the things you love most are shown at their best.

You can do lovely things with light: bring a lively feel to the house when it’s time to work, or a calm, intimate one as you wind down at dusk, simply by using indirect lighting in the right tone.

Let’s start with a technical point… and a practical one: directional light and diffused light.

A lamp can give out light in two different ways: directional or diffused.

– Directional light comes from lamps that send a concentrated beam onto a particular surface. These lamps usually have opaque, reflective shades, which is what concentrates the light.

– Diffused light, on the other hand, spreads evenly through the whole room, creating a bubble of light with soft contrasts in the dimmer areas. You get it from lamps with translucent shades of glass, paper or fabric. Warm and pleasant as it is, it isn’t task lighting, so it needs to be combined with directional light. One example of warm diffused light is the lovely ‘Moon at Home’.

Another point: it’s important to make good use of daylight and let in as much of it as you can. There’s an old saying: ‘where the sun comes in, the doctor stays out’.

Sometimes, in the evening, you need a white light very close to sunlight for things like studying or working, in your kitchen for example… Our eyes get less tired under this kind of light. Ask in a lighting shop and they’ll give you specific advice. If your child studies in a dark room during the day, it’s worth bearing in mind too.

More things to consider about lighting your home:

First of all, light shapes all life, and our health with it. It sets our rhythms, especially when we sleep. Our body clock runs on light, so you can make light your ally and support your own rhythms. Have you heard of the circadian rhythm? It’s well worth looking into, because it’s a truly fascinating subject.

In nature, light works in cycles, and they set the rhythm of everything. We can watch the seasons follow one another, each so different, with a character of its own, and see the trees shed their leaves and then grow them back with new vigour. We can watch every sunrise followed by a sunset, the unchanging phases of the moon, rain giving way to sun… the tides rising and falling with the moon, the ebb and flow of the waves…

So the rhythms of nature shape our own lives too, even when we’re unaware of it. Does this affect how we design our homes?

While in winter you’ll welcome the morning sun coming into your room,

in summer you’ll be glad of curtains that keep out the early light. You may also need translucent glass or sheer curtains for privacy. Well chosen, they’ll filter the sunlight and give the room a cosier, more personal feel, which makes the house easier and more pleasant to live in.

As for artificial light, ideally it should imitate natural light, which is constantly changing in intensity and tone. You can do the same in the little world of your own home.

We recommend playing with different levels of light, using the various dimming and lighting-control systems on the market. They’re simple, and more and more models fit almost any lamp or switch.

You can also choose to fit bulbs of different strengths.

Switch to energy-saving bulbs such as LEDs. These days, all these control systems are part of using light intelligently, as you’d expect in a modern society that wants plenty of comfort while saving as much energy as it can.

From an ecological point of view, using less energy also means cutting CO2 emissions and making more sustainable use of natural resources and of the energy sources themselves, which protects the environment. This matters, because it’s part of the sustainable development we need, which means thinking about the needs of future generations.

Light at bedtime

As bedtime approaches, you can turn the lights down around the house: just switch off a few lamps or use the dimmers… and remember to stop using the white-light bulbs and keep only the warmest ones on. It makes it easier for the whole household to head off to bed. As well as helping you when you want to relax, this little trick works especially well when there are children at home.

Now, to finish, here’s a special suggestion for the little ones.

…How about playing with stories and the full moon, every night… in your own home?

Here’s the idea: with the Moon at Home LED lamp in your hand, you can use the language of nature to talk without words to your children, or to grandparents and the rest of the household.

First, switch it on at full brightness, in white light that imitates daylight.

Later, as bedtime approaches, switch it to warm light. Finally, turn the brightness right down, and it stays on as a distant glow that softly lights the children’s room.

Without a word and without effort, just by playing with the light of the ‘Moon at Home’, you’ve been telling them it’s time to wind down and get ready for sleep. It helps you look after yourself and get ready to rest, too.