Simple Tips on Improving Lighting in Your Home - as part of the expert series by GeoBeats.
Hi, I'm Mary Bokovoy, owner of Hood River reDesign, and I have some suggestions for improving lighting in a dark room. The first thing you want to look at is 'Is it possible to install canned lights in your ceiling?' A lot of people are so afraid of pursuing that. They think electric bills, and 'Oh! Its going to be just out of reach', but a lot of times, if you have some added space up there, it is really not an expensive project. My husband did our old a 1960's house in a weekend with a little tip from a friend who is an electrician, and we had canned lights, at the end of the weekend, for just a very inexpensive trip to Home Depot. So you want to first look into that because canned lights will modernize your home and add overall, you know, overhead lighting for as cheap as possible.
Second, even if you cannot do that, you can at least do this, 'add mirrors to your walls, large mirrors', because with any natural light you do have coming in, it will instantly be doubled by the use of mirrors.
And then lastly, when you look at your window coverings, you want to do modern drapes. A lot of people have the old fashioned valances that hang way low and it blocks a lot of natural light. What you want to do is do full length drapes that just kiss the ground. No high water pants on your drapes. You want to have it go all the way down where it kisses the carpet or your flooring, and you want to set the bar. Everybody always asks me, 'Where do I set the bar?'. Typically, you want to do it between the end of your window trim and your ceiling height. So right in between this, typically the sweet spot, or maybe a little bit even higher, closer to the ceiling. And you want to do it to the side of your windows so that you make your windows look taller and wider than they really are, and then your drapes when you want them open, are actually hiding wall not window. So that you're getting massive amount of light during the day and then you can completely cover them at night.
So doing those 3 tricks will make your room much lighter and brighter.
