Have you ever walked in a room and felt scared, happy, welcomed, or intimidated?
Did you know that you can change the mood of a room in your home, office, or other space just by changing the lighting?
Here are some tips and tricks for different lighting ideas in your home.
photo courtesy of Zoran Cto flickr.com/photos/zorancurto/27226796815/Intimate
If you want the mood of a room in your home or restaurant to be intimate, just use some diffused lighting in one portion of the room and leave the rest of the lights off.
To accomplish this, you could use one lamp for reading a book, a dim chandelier for an intimate dinner, or light from a fireplace.
A cluster of candles is always a winner when setting an intimate mood.
Intense
If you would like the mood of a room to be intense, leave the lights off on the perimeter of the room and just use bright direct lighting on in the middle of the room.
You can imagine someone in a movie being interrogated using this method.
You can also give an intense and almost scary mood by lighting people from below, which would be a fun effect for Halloween.
Focused
If you want the mood of a room to be focused, use even bright lighting all over the room.
Classroom often use an even distribution of fluorescent lights to help students focus.
You can even use an equal distribution of light in your kitchen from overhead lights to help you focus on cooking.
Often restaurants will have focused lights that are only used after all diners have left to help them clean at night.
Relaxed and Casual
If you would like the mood of a room to be relaxed and casual, just use perimeter lighting.
This would be good for watching TV or hanging out with the family.
You can use dim lamps or uplighting in the corners of your room or indirect lighting that illuminates your ceiling. </
