Residential Lighting

By Stan O. Humphries, P.E.

Here is the first in a series of articles about interior and exterior lighting design.  And to begin with I’ll start the series by discussing the basics of interior residential lighting.  I call it “basic” because there are several lighting components that a lighting designer like myself, an architect, interior designer or electrical contractor will use to light up your house.  Those basics are ambient lighting, accent lighting and decorative lighting.

Nothing hard here the terms noted above mean just what they say.  Ambient lighting is the light that surrounds you, like from your kitchen fluorescent or downlights, it fills the room with light.  Accent lighting is your track fixtures or directional fixtures that  might accent a piece of artwork or a table centerpiece.  The decorative lights would include your pendant centered over your dining room, the sconces in your hallway etc.  These terms are not finite, for example the decorative lights can be used to provide ambient lighting or they can just be for decoration.

Good lighting will typically use all three basic types of lighting in a room.  This is an approach that is called “layering”.  Let’s use a great room with a vaulted ceiling, wood beams, a large window with a beautiful view, stone fire place, stone wall accents etc. as an example.  Consider if we were to try lighting this room with only one type of lighting, say decorative lights, pendants and sconces.  You would probably end up putting too many light fixtures in the room and distracting away from the beauty of the architecture.

So instead look at using each of the three types of basic lighting in this great room.  First consider using an uplight as an ambient light source, recessed slot accent lights to accent a piece of art on the walls and the fireplace and maybe just a pair of decorative glass sconces to mark the entry.  The uplight can take the form of using an incandescent strip of lights called "click strips” mounted at the top of the wood beams.  This uplight serves two purposes then, one to lift up the ceiling and to bounce light off of the ceiling to provide the ambient lighting to the room.  That is it makes the room seem bigger and fills the room with a very unobtrusive light.  That serves as our first layer of light.

The second layer of light would be the accent lighting.  I’ve mentioned a “recessed slot accent” light fixture, this is a heavily shielded recessed directional light. There are several different types of “accent lights”.  The important point is that we use the accent lights to highlight a portion of the great room.  The fire place can sometimes be the biggest attraction in the room architecturally.  So we put two or more accent lights at the ceiling in front of the fireplace to highlight the stone work, mantle, tile etc.  Another big attraction in the great room might be the piece of original art work that you want to display.  So the best display of the artwork is accenting the artwork with UV filtered accent lights.  Further accent lighting might be accent lights mounted over the couch for reading, or at a center table to highlight the vase of flowers.  Use the accent lighting to draw the attention of the occupant to what you are proudest of in that room.

Decorative lighting would be the final touch to fill in any gaps in the lighting described above.  I’ve mentioned a pair of sconces at the entry to add a bit of glitter and light as you walk into the room.  The rest of the light take over from there.  But I’ve been very generic in this discussion and there might be plenty of opportunities for more decorative lighting.  For example a pair of chandeliers might be used to complement the architecture of the room and to provide the ambient up light that we want.

Now the final piece that ties all this lighting together is an appropriate dimming system that can balance the levels of lighting to fit your particular mood.  Dimming systems simply dim the ambient, accent and decorative lights to the appropriate level.  It is usually best if you dim each of the lighting layers separately, one dimmer might be the ambient lighting, two other dimmers might be the accent lighting at the fireplace and artwork and another dimmer for the decorative lights.

Now envision walking into this room at night time.  You are welcomed with a sparkle of the entry sconces.  You might be drawn to the highlight of the room, the artwork or fireplace, by the accent lights.  And you are comfortable with the surrounding light from the uplights so that you see to walk over to the artwork and admire it.  All three lighting components, ambient, accent and decorative lighting come together to beautifully illuminate this special room in your house. 

Stan Humphries is a lighting professional who is the president of the mechanical and electrical design firm, Architectural Engineering Consultants.  You can contact him at work, 970-748-8520, or via email at stanh@aec-vail.com .