Lighting is a very important aspect of a home. It can affect your sleep schedule, health, and home safety. It is, therefore, not surprising that many take their time in deciding the best lighting for their home. After all, home is where you spend a big portion of your life.

Aside from adding to a relaxing and productive environment, lighting has other important functions. First step in deciding the best lighting for your home is determining the type of lighting that each room needs. There are three categories of lighting according to function and they are:

1. General (Ambient) Lighting –refers to lighting intended to illuminate the entirety of a room. If your light bulb’s only purpose is to make a room bright enough so you can move about comfortably and safely, it falls into this category.

2. Task Lighting – pertains to lighting design to help you better complete a particular task. This lighting is generally brighter than the room’s general lighting. One example is the lamp you use on your reading area.

3. Accent Lighting – is mainly for aesthetics and designed to highlight a specific area of the room such as a portrait or sculpture.

Here is our recommended lighting arrangement for each room in the house.

Living Room – ambient light at the center of the ceiling then add an accent light to one corner to add character to the room while also making it look more spacious .

Kitchen – overhead ambient light along with task lighting for the sink area and work area.

Bedroom – ambient light plus a task light that points away from the bed.

Bathroom – Overhead ambient light plus a task light for the mirror.

Finally, it is time to choose the type of light bulb you will be using.

Incandescent – the traditional light bulb. Low purchase price by significantly short life span and high energy consumption. This type of bulb is almost phased out and it is expected that most modern countries will have implemented a total ban on the sale and use of incandescent bulbs by 2020.

Compact Florescent Light (CFL) – consumes 75% less electricity and can last up to 3 times compared to an incandescent light. Just be careful with disposal as CFLs contain mercury.

Light Emitting Diode (LED) – consumes up to 85% less energy than an incandescent light and can last up to 4 times longer than a CFL. LED lighting is considered green energy and is highly recommended by governments and environmental groups. If you want to try replacing your old lighting with LED lighting, we recommend US GL’sLED 3 Watt Candelabra. It has an estimated useful life of 25,000 hours with 87% less power consumption.