Lighting our new home...

When we started thinking about the design of our new house, one of the things that was high up on our priority list was to create a home that was light and bright. Although white walls and large windows can make a home bright, there are big chunks of the year when it gets dark early and there is no natural light to illuminate a home and this is when good lighting becomes really important.

Now I won't pretend that we've nailed the lighting situation yet, but we do have a few ideas and I've been putting together a Pinterest board as we've gone along. If that sounds a bit fanciful, bear in mind most of the remodel so far was based on ideas from Pinterest!

Follow Clare Mansell's board Lighting on Pinterest.

Kitchen

I love rope lighting and I have seen it used really cleverly under kitchen cabinets. It gives a lovely glow when the lights are turned down low at night and instantly makes the kitchen look more modern. It's pretty easy to fit and can just be plugged into a wall socket at one end.

Our bedroom

This is one of the few rooms in the house where we have a pendant light. We have very high vaulted ceilings and needed a really huge fitting to fill the space. Everything I looked at was either too expensive or too small. In the end I found a wedding supplier who make paper lanterns that are a metre wide. We bought one for £20 and I think it looks great. Next on the list is bedside lights, there is so much lovely fabric around that I think the solution may be to buy some simple bases (I love these from BHS) and make the shade ourselves.

via Etsy

via Dunelm

Sitting room

We have halogen lights in the ceiling in our sitting room, they are great for bright light, but we also need a mixture of table and floor lights for mood light in the evenings. I really like the 70s style floor lamps with three pronged wooden bases. For table lights, we have a red sofa that dominates the room and I think the best way to work with that is top bring other colour into the room. We have a few colourful pictures for the wall and I really fancy a teal coloured table lamp.

via The White Company

Theo's room

I'm not really a fan of traditional children's lighting, not least of all cause they grow out of it too quickly. However I do think a kid's bedroom is a great place to have some fun with lights. Theo has one floor light from Ikea (pretty dog standard but does the job) and having just graduated to a single bed, I'm on the look out for a quirky light for his bedside table. I also love Marquee lights and think one would be great above his bed. There's a great cheap DIY tutorial here but sadly I think it would last 5 minutes in a toddler's room!

 

Via Lights4Fun

via Lighting Majestic

Outside

Lighting the garden is an important area that is often forgotten about. Thanks to my dad, we did remember to ask the electricians to add three LED spot lights into the overhang of our roof during the build and when we get round to building the deck outside our sitting room they will be a fantastic feature. However I still want to add some festoon party lights (like fairy lights but with bigger bulbs) and some nautical style lamps to our veranda at the front of the house to help transform the garden into an outside room.

This post is an entry to the Lighting Majestic competition to win an iPad Mini, find out more here