More than likely your home has different types of lighting, each of which helps you manage and enjoy the many aspects of everyday living. Ambient, accent, and task lighting are the main types illuminating the interior of your home. However, the objective is the same – to make it easy to see regardless of the time or the weather.
Ambient Lighting
You’ll find ambient lighting fixtures on the ceilings in kitchens, baths, closets, hallways and sometimes bedrooms. Builders often install a lone light fixture in the middle of a garage ceiling. Sometimes the lighting fixtures are basic globes, but you’ll also find them as more elaborate fixtures in foyers or adjustable track lights in kitchens.
These light fixtures broadcast enough light over a room to make everything visible. They won’t highlight any particular area. Consequently, they cast shadows on objects that sit on the floor or walls beneath them. Builders or lighting specialists often hard-wire ambient lights to a wall light switch just inside the door for instant lighting.
Best Uses for Ambient Lighting
Ambient lights play an important role in safety and basic home functionality. Naturally dark spaces like kitchen pantries or walk-in closets without overhead lighting are difficult to use even during the daytime.
Ambient lighting upgrades include track lighting in kitchens and chandeliers placed in foyers and dining rooms. Decorative pendant lighting is a more informal style for these areas, as are recessed can lights.
Task Lighting
The effectiveness of task lighting depends on having different types of lighting in the same room. Combining under cabinet task lighting in kitchens or wet bars illuminates the countertops. Task lights are often freestanding in the shape of desk lamps and floor lamps, fixed or swing-arm, however, they can be hung under cabinets or from the ceiling. You should use ambient lighting with task lights to better illuminate the work you’re doing close-up.
Best Uses for Task Lighting
Placed on tables, desks, or next to chairs, task lighting is essential for detailed work like reading and handcrafts. Hung over work tables or desks, task lights provide ample illumination for work that requires accuracy day or night.
Cooking in a kitchen with task lighting is much easier and safer than using ambient lighting alone. While battery-operated light strips or spotlights are available for under-cabinet use, they require frequent battery changes and their mounting brackets wear out over time.
Accent Lighting
Of all the different types of lighting, accents lights are the least common in homes as standard features. Use accent lighting to illuminate artwork, musical instruments, or cabinet displays. People who decorate for the holidays often unwittingly use accent lighting in the yards when they string lights along their roof lines or thread them through their shrubbery.
Best Uses for Accent Lighting
Accent lights call attention to objects that hang from walls or sit on the floor. They can highlight your favorite photographs, artwork, or a piano. Outdoors, accent lighting enhances landscaping year-round and makes the yard more usable after dark by illuminating walkways and steps.
Upgrading Lighting Fixtures
Adding lighting fixtures that will add functionality and beauty to your home and yard require the services of a licensed electrician. At Turn It On Electric, our electricians are licensed and highly skilled. Wiring is a complicated home improvement project that affects your personal safety and that of your home.
To learn more about improving the different types of lighting in your home, contact the pros at Turn It On Electric today.
