Creating Mood With Lighting - Kansas City Apartment and Rental decorating Advice

While some rooms in your home require absolute functionality, there are others where mood can make a huge difference in a decorating scheme.

Functionality belongs in the kitchen, a room that may be used as an office and the bathroom. Beyond that, mood should reign. Don’t be afraid to play with different lighting tricks to help create a mood without breaking the bank. Plus, whether you’re looking to save money and still create a mood or you’ve planned on spending a fortune decorating your place, the pros will tell you lighting is key no matter the scheme.

Even in rooms where functionality is paramount, mood can be set with ancillary lighting techniques. In the kitchen, bathroom and office, set lighting first to ensure there will be enough to tackle everyday projects. If your main light doesn’t offer what’s necessary to see a recipe or shave, it’s not bright enough. With that said, you can have other sources of light in these rooms to use as accents or in place of the utilitarian lighting when the work is done and setting a mood is on tap.

In the kitchen, for example, the main lighting should be bright. But, what do you do if you want a quiet dinner at the kitchen table and would prefer not to be blasted with the cooking light? Have a secondary source of lighting for this occasion.

Track lighting, small accent lamps, hanging lamps and even candles can work in this situation. Turn off the main light that mimics the candle power of the sun and turn on an accent to set a cozy tone once the cooking is done.

Living rooms, bedrooms and dining areas are perhaps the easiest to accent with lighting to create moods. These are the rooms in a home where people expect mood lighting.

When looking to set moods in these rooms and others, consider the message you’d like to send. The rule of thumb is that bright lights project a positive tone. More subtly lit rooms speak to intimacy and romance. Take care not to use one extreme or the other too much, however. All sense of mood is lost if light is so blinding it hurts a person’s head! If it’s so dark you stumble when you walk, add some more light before you break a leg. There’s nothing romantic about an emergency room trip!

That said, pick the mood or moods you’d like each room to exude. If intimacy in the dining area is your choice, go for something a little middle of the road. It’s not a good idea to have the dining area so dim you can’t see your food or so bright it’s painful to have your eyes open. Mix it up with a chandelier that maybe has different brightness settings and some decorative candles to set just the right tone. The same goes in the bedroom where sometimes it’s necessary to have a lot of light and others, well, the light is an intrusion. A blend of overhead lights, well-shaded table lamps and even candles can set different moods at different times.

Don’t be afraid to experiment with lighting to find out what works and what doesn’t for your personal tastes. As you experiment, you’ll find different combinations work in a single room to present the mood de jour. Go with it, have fun and don’t think you have to go to great expense to make a statement with lighting, that’s simply not so.

by Tiffany Lewis, Kansas City Premier Apartments, Inc.