The lighting in your home can impart almost any mood you want it to, from bright and cheery to subdued and romantic. You can use home lighting to highlight your favorite aspects of the home’s architecture or to hide certain flaws in a space you would prefer not to bring attention to. Sometimes all it really takes to change the whole mood, look and feel of a room is some great new lighting, which is why lighting is so very important when it comes to staging your home to sell.
But before you begin shopping for new lighting to aid you in your home staging efforts it helps to understand the basic lighting and fixture types that are available to you and how to use them to the very best effect.
Pendant Lights
Pendant lights hang down from the ceiling and usually cast their light directly downwards. This means that pendant lights make extraordinarily good task lighting, especially in smaller spaces where floor or table lamps would take up too much space.
Pendant lights have become a popular and stylish choice for kitchen task lighting. Hung over a counter top, pendant lights will provide more than adequate illumination for various cooking tasks to be completed with ease. The wide variety of styles and designs available today also means that pendant lighting can be incorporated as a major part , or even the focal point, of stylish modern kitchen decor.
Pendant lighting is not just to be reserved for the kitchen though. Other popular uses for it include using them to illuminate a walk in closet or add an extra dimension of style to a dark hallway.
Chandeliers
In one respect, chandeliers are the centuries old ancestors of the modern pendant light. A chandelier is also hung from the ceiling but its light radiates from all angles, easily illuminating the entire room.
Most chandeliers, whether traditional or modern in design, really do demand center stage in whatever room they are installed. In recent years the chandelier has begun to extend further into the home than just their traditional location as the center piece of a formal living or dining room or in the foyer. These days chandeliers can be found used to great effect in bedrooms, bathrooms and even kitchens.
Floor Lamps
Ask any interior decorator or lighting designer, and they will tell you that the best lighting scheme for any room is one that lights in layers, instead of just from a single lighting source. Floor lamps add the all important accent lighting element to a room and can also serve as a stand alone décor feature that can in some cases provide the focus for an entire room.
Modern floor lamps come in a huge array of sizes and styles, from the functional over-sized student lamp to an elegant floor lamp with several illumination points, a style that offers the homeowner a variety of different ways to light up their living space with just a single lamp.
Table Lamps
Even is this day and age the humble table lamp still has a useful and attractive part to play in a great, balanced lighting scheme. No that the table lamp is always that much of a humble fixture. For instance, there are few light fixtures more beautiful than Tiffany style glass table lamps. These elegant light fixtures can add an air of elegance and sophistication to a room like few other objects can.
A table lamp is also still the favorite choice for ambient bedroom lighting. After all, what is more convenient than a bedside table lamp and the generally softer light they radiate is the perfect mood setter in any boudoir.
Wall Sconces
There are those interior designers who feel that wall scoundrels should not be considered lighting fixtures at all but rather as pieces of wall art. It is certainly true that an elegant set of wall sconces can change the mood of a room the second they are installed and used properly can indeed become one of the focal points in any living space.
As a part of a layered lighting scheme wall sconces can be used to great effect in dining and living rooms as well as the bedroom. However, they are often most effective when used as the ancient torches that inspired their creation were – to illuminate a darkened hallway and welcome visitors out of the darkness into the warmth of the home within.