Let in the Light

Several elements are essential for how your rooms feel but, arguably, it’s the lighting that makes the critical difference. If you can get it right, your rooms can showcase your interior themes at their best. Get it wrong, and all your hard work and money spent on décor can fall flat.

Light is one of the most potent elements of a room. When you nail it, you can create rooms that achieve the right mood to inspire and motivate you. There’s nothing better than having lots of light in the morning to get you fired up for the rest of the day or make entertaining guests more comfortable.

Use More Than One Source Of Light

In general, designers agree that you should choose at least two sources of light per room – and ideally more. You want your lighting to fill the space, instead of appearing to come from any specific direction. Uplighting and downlighting are, therefore, both essential.

Bouncing rays all over the place help to eliminate ugly shadows or extreme intensities, filling the space in exciting ways.

With artificial light, this is easy: you simply use recessed lighting, task lights, and accent lighting for different angles. But with artificial light, you need to build scattering into your rooms themselves. Reflective white surfaces, for instance, help to bounce incoming lights from windows and skylights in multiple directions and illuminate ceilings and other room elements too.

Consider Door And Window Placement

Door and window placement is vital, especially if you have north-facing rooms in your home. Ideally, you want to orientate your rooms around incoming sources of light. For south-facing rooms, this is easy: display rooms should feature all your focal points on the north-side wall. This way, you can use natural light to illuminate your art, mantelpieces and wall spaces.

For north-facing rooms, it is a little more challenging. However, even here aluminium door and window placement can make a difference to the feel of your rooms. North-facing rooms provide you with a much softer light throughout the year. The ambience in these rooms feels different and is something you can take advantage of when considering your decor.

Ideally, you want windows that collect daylight and distribute it around the room. If your windows and doors are south-facing, therefore, you may want to use blinds and curtains to manage the brightness and prevent excessive heating in the summer. You may also want to consider placing windows and doors besides canopies to control the level of incoming solar radiation when the sun is high in the sky.

For north-facing windows, you may not have to cover them at all to control the level of light. They will provide pale illumination all year round, giving you more flexibility over where you put your aluminium windows and doors.

Please note that you can enhance the level of natural light in any room using reflective colours (like white) and large mirrors. So even if your window and door placement aren’t ideal, there are plenty of opportunities for adapting the room to them.