Brightening Up a Dim Room with These 6 Awesome Elements

Meritage Marion Dining Chair: The beautiful interplay of light and shadow makes this dining room both cozy yet airy.

When you are asked to brighten up a dim room, what’s your immediate reaction? Do you instantly think of bringing in more lights? The great news is, this is not the only way to brighten up an otherwise dim area. Here are other ways –

Depend on White

To brighten up a cave-like room, don’t immediately turn to mirrors. While mirrors reflect light, they do not scatter light, hence you will need a lot of mirrors to make a dim room brighter.

To scatter light, use lots of white. Since this is not even considered a color, it does not absorb any hues. White bounces off as much light as it can. This would mean brighter surfaces especially when you have an all-white ceiling and walls.

To be more aggressive about this project, you don’t have to stop with the ceilings and walls. Consider putting other white elements like white frames for your art, white furnishing, white bedding, and white curtains.

Experiment with Cool Blue

The cool shades of blue are cooler than the usual yellow tone of incandescent light bulbs. Blue light gives a different crispness to the surroundings, plus it easily reminds us of the skies.

Apart from adding blue, you can also opt for a light bulb update. Use cool daylight colors on your bulbs. True white bulbs achieve the coolest, freshest, and brightest in any room.

Add Wall Lights

Let’s go ahead and wash your walls with more light. Light washing the walls will guarantee edges that are bright so be sure to add sconces that have shades aiming downward and upward. You will soon see that despite the lack of windows in, say, the bedroom, that it still looks illuminated.

When adding lights, consider adding lights also closer to your walls. These will cast down or pour light onto your walls. This will be a beautiful way to highlight features such as your kitchen cabinets.

You can also resort to under cabinet lighting which creates the same effect. Adding this glow will balance the edges which will solve the shadows created by the bulky cabinets.

When you’re planning to brighten a den or the laundry room, try to replace the pendant or flush-mount light with a semi-flush which hangs just below the ceiling. This should help diffuse the light across the ceiling almost like the bright effects of a skylight.

Picture lights can also brighten up walls while making a focal point of your artwork.

Balance with Black

It may seem ironic that you’re asked to use black when you are aiming to brighten up a room but charcoal black can make surrounding areas appear lighter and brighter. Black makes other hues pop so use black chairs, photos in black frames, or doses of black patterns on fabrics.

Add blue to your charcoal black (more particularly navy blue) and you’d have achieved a beachy vibe.

Balancing between shadows and light is a natural interplay that you should not interrupt. Offer balance by understanding depth while adding a sense of life to the rooms in your home.

A Colorful Rug on Dark Flooring

Laminate or dark hardwood flooring is a wonderful addition to any home but their dark vibe can drain light out of your space. To avoid this, especially in tight corridors, you might want to roll out a runner rug in a lighter tone. This should break up the dark hue and create an airier and richer zone.

Or Just Use Blond Woods

If you’re really into hardwood floors but do not want to go for the darker ones, then opt for pale woods. These will surely liven up your space. Once installed, just throw in some potted plants and your home will be the sunniest space there is.

Tags: brightening up rooms, home lighting, improving home lighting

This entry was posted on Monday, October 9th, 2017 at 1:22 pm and is filed under Interior Design 101, Interior Design Elements, Lighting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.