A Beginner’s Guide to Choosing Mood Lighting
This article will educate beginners on the basics of mood lighting, the different types available, and practical tips for selecting the best lighting solutions to enhance the ambiance and functionality of any space.
Mood lighting is what sets a mood in any space, what tells anyone who enters what the space is meant for: work, relaxation, and more. It is something you can use methodically in your home to create the right feelings. With different types of mood lighting, you have a subtle yet powerful tool for setting the right atmosphere. In this guide, we’ll explore mood lighting basics, different types, and tips for choosing the right setup.
What Is Mood Lighting and Why It Matters
What is mood lighting? Mood lighting refers to any type of light used to create a specific mood. The physical type of light, the direction, color temperature, and brightness can all have a psychological impact on things like mood, alertness, relaxation, and focus. That is why it is so important to find the right type of mood light for your space.
Mood Light Psychological Effects
Having the right balance between the color, type, and brightness helps with:
- Social interaction
- Sleep quality
- Productivity
- Emotional regulation
Mood lighting that includes warm colors like yellow, orange, and red is best for promoting social interaction and calmness. These types of lights are common in areas like dining room chandeliers or living rooms where you are most likely to entertain people and you want them to feel at ease. These colors are also used for ambient lighting in the evening when you want to create a sense of coziness.
Mood lighting that includes blue colors is best for promoting alertness and focus. Ideally, these are colors that are used in places where you are engaged in activities and you need to be focused, like a kitchen, bathroom, or at home office.
More than the color is the brightness. Dim lighting from things like accent lights and decorative lights promote sleepiness and relaxation making them best for places like the bedroom or the living room whereas bright colors from ambient lighting and task lighting can encourage alertness.
Different Types of Mood Lighting
There are several different types of mood lighting available to any home or office, including ambient lighting, accent lighting, task lighting, and decorative lighting.
Ambient Lighting
Ambient light is the most substantial form of lighting you have in any space. With ambient lighting, you can set the mood of a space with your overhead light like a chandelier in a dining room that hangs over the center of your dining room table and invites people to a relaxing but upbeat atmosphere for family dinners.
The right mood light can be an overhead fixture like a ceiling fan with lights attached or recessed LED bulbs that run along the ceiling and allow you to optimize lighting based on where you are in the room.
Accent Lighting
Accent lighting is just that: it is a way to draw attention to an accent. This type of mood light adds dimension and depth to a given space, highlighting certain design elements like a standing fireplace in the corner of your room, a large painting on the wall, or a cozy seating area.
You can use accent lighting in the form of spotlights that shine down on a reading nook or a television, as well as recessed lighting and wall lights that are semi-flush with the ceiling or completely flush with the ceiling so they don’t hang down but they still add brightness.
Task Lighting
Task lighting is a form of mood lighting designed to encourage focused activities from things like working on a computer, reading in a living room, or actively working in the kitchen. The most common types of task lights are things like standing lamps or table lamps that can be placed around the area where that task is most likely to be done.
For example:
If you work from home, you might have task lighting in the form of table lamps placed on either side of your desk so that you can add blue light brightness to the space when you are working in the afternoons.
Decorative Lighting
Decorative lighting is there to add illumination, usually to the floor spaces, in a way that creates a romantic and relaxed atmosphere. Decorative lighting might be best in cozy living rooms and bedrooms.
Tips for Choosing the Right Mood Lighting
So, how do you choose the right mood light for a given space? Pay attention to your room’s specific needs, color temperature, and energy efficiency.
Room-specific guidance
With regard to each room, consider what your lighting needs are. For example:
- In a kitchen you might need to create the mood of energy and activity with task lighting like LED strip lights that get attached under a wall-mounted cabinet so that the light shines down on your countertops and makes it easier and safer to work in the kitchen.
- In a bathroom you might need bright accent lighting that goes on either side of your bathroom mirror or LED lights that are built in around the mirror to provide optimum brightness when getting ready in the morning with adjustable features for warmer lights if you are winding down for the night.
- In a living room or den, you might need ambient lighting that provides light in specific corners or walls around something like a fireplace, a seating area, or a television so that you can turn off the overhead lights when you are watching a movie or turn on task lights in the form of tableside lamps when you are trying to read.
Pay attention to your personal needs and habits in a given space. Do you often wind down before bed by reading in bed? If so, you might need task lighting to set a relaxing mood in the evening but you might also need ambient lighting to help brighten the same room when the sun is going down or in winter when it gets dark very early.
Color temperature
Color temperature is an important consideration when you are choosing a mood light. As mentioned, the colors you choose will determine whether any individual in that space feels relaxed and focused or relaxed and at ease. Bluer colors can help stimulate concentration with task lighting, while warmer yellows can encourage socialization and relaxation in areas where you tend to have guests.
For example, brighter, blue light colors mimic the natural daylight or sunlight. These are best for task lighting, the types of activities that require focus and energy. By comparison, things that are closer to yellow or red are warmer and encourage people to calm down, be relaxed, rather than be active. These are best for accent lighting and ambient lighting.
Energy efficiency
When you are looking at different types of mood lighting, it’s important that you also choose something that is energy efficient. Energy efficiency can save you significant money on your energy bills particularly when the ambient, task, or accent lighting you choose is something that stays on frequently.
Things like LED strip lights or bulbs provide incomparably better energy efficiency than traditional incandescent bulbs. How?
Traditional incandescent bulbs use almost 99% of the energy produced in the form of heat that comes off of the bulb as opposed to brightness that comes out of the bulb. This means the majority of the money you spend on energy bills for traditional incandescent lights gets wasted, but with LEDS, like LED strip lighting for accent lighting or task lighting and LED bulbs for decorative or ambient lighting, all of that energy gets put into the bulb itself.
Choosing the Perfect Mood Lighting: Conclusion
Mood lighting is very important for creating the desired ambiance. So take the time today to assess your spaces and try mood lighting setups that fit your needs.