How To Put Lights Up In Restrooms?
If you’re working on remodeling a bathroom, many people can’t be sure where lights go and just figure it out when it’s time to worry about it. This can cause them to have a bathroom light and ventilation situation that doesn’t make the room look good and makes it hard to apply makeup or do anything in the mirror. It’s difficult a lot of the time to light a bathroom because there are various light types and things like mirrors that need to reflect light in different manners.
Here, you’re going to learn how to plan for a good lighting system in a bathroom so if you want to know more be sure that you continue on!
Natural Lighting
When it comes to bathroom lighting, the best solutions include designing the light to be layered. You can mix together lighting like having ambient, task, and decorative at the same time. You can count on the mood of a room like this to be much nicer.
One thing to remember when lighting bathrooms is to help increase the natural lighting options like skylights and windows to help with your ambient lighting situation. On top off that, you want to add other light layers like ambient light that is added to make everything a lot easier to look at. You’ll want to cover every area of the bathroom with lighting options while you renovate your bathroom.
There is a lot to gain out of maximizing your natural light sources. When you’re trying to work on building a home or you’re doing some renovations, it’s smart to have a bathroom that faces north. The light that comes from exposure to the north is going to be a soft and diffused light which can be a great option for the best illumination. You can also add a skylight and that will help you to have better lighting without you having to spend money on electricity and provides you the best interior design for your bathroom.
Accent Lighting
Use accent lighting to help decor elements get brightened up like interesting features through the architecture off a room. You can also add a light to an area above various elements.
Task lighting is what you need in place to help you see what you’re doing. You can add some recessed lighting in places like the shower, but make sure these fixtures are able to handle getting wet.
Ambient lighting is usually there to mimic natural lighting so you’re going to want to have recessed lighting fixtures that form a line or grid depending on the size and shape of the bathroom.
Get your pencil out and a tape measure. You can then measure how much space is above the vanity so you can figure out how much lighting you need. You’re going to want to measure the space above it and then the width of the vanity. These measurements are going to help you figure out where to place your recessed fixtures.
Plan and Measure!
You need to think about how many lights to buy and that has to do with your measurement. You want to know what kind of lighting it is because ambient light requires a couple of fixtures but task lighting may include a few more than that. Smaller fixtures can be placed together if that works better for you.
The lights need to be spaced out properly. You need to figure out how many you’re going to have to work with and what your measurements are. For instance, if you need to light a vanity with 60 inches above it for lights, you can add a couple but they have to be 20 inches apart on either side to make them look good.
Get away from the wall and you’ll be able to measure how deep the vanity is from the wall to the counter then you need to divide that number in half. Your result will tell you how far your recessed celling light should be from the wall.
Fill lights can now be installed. If you’re interested in good lighting, you need to remember that downlighting can cause issues like shadows when you want to apply makeup. It might be better to get wall sconces if you want to get good results.
The color rendering index is a scale from 0 to 100 that tells you how lights make colors look. You need to know the color accuracy so you can know if it’s right for your vanity. A 90 percent or higher is generally the way to go and then in a shower situation as low as 85 would be good.
Color temperature is easy to figure out because it’s the reason why some lights look yellow while others look blue. This happens because a color temperature amount that all lights are going to have. Usually the scale goes from 1,000 to 10,000 degrees Kelvin. A 2k to 3k range of color temperature is a warm looking light and 3500 to 6500K would be a better option for something you need to light up with bright light in the center of the bathroom.
There are many bulb types. In recessed lighting you’ll see that halogen, incandescent, and LED types of bulbs are common. LED is now really popular because it can cast light that’s bright without it generating a lot of electricity.
Pick out a good light bulb and make sure the light is as warm as possible.
What Else Should You Know?
You have to keep a few things in your mind while you’re thinking about what light fixtures are going to be the best option in your situation.
All of the lights are in need of being damp-rated so they don’t malfunction when something like a hot shower happens. Wet rated is more important than damp rated if there is a good chance it will get completely wet.
Remember that your bathroom light fixtures need to be the right size. If you buy them and they’re too large they can be overwhelming while if they’re too small they may not do their job properly.
With your task lighting, make sure you install dimmer switches so that you have the ability to turn the brightness down so when you don’t need it you can be more relaxed with less lighting.
In The End
Selecting a good effective lighting solution for your bathroom is not always going to be easy but if you work on layering lights and placing the right kinds of lights you’ll get better results. You can see your bathroom as one of the fanciest rooms in the house with stellar lighting and installation of elegant bathroom fixtures.
