Not everyone wants the same thing from home lighting. Each home is uniquely lit based on the needs and preferences of the family in residence - or the last owner to remodel.
Some people want a brilliantly lit kitchen most of all. Some want better light in the hallways and in-between spaces. Some want to completely renovate the old dim fixtures that came with the house.
And for some of us, the best kind of lighting is a beautiful twilight. It's great to turn on clear, bright lights when it's time to clean. But when enjoying your home indoors, you may prefer to create a softly lit retreat that gently supports your at-home moods. Whether you are a night person or just enjoy a softer selection of lighting, it's easy to create a beautiful twilight in your home with custom lighting.
A softly lit space can make it easier to relax when you're at home and easier to wind down before bed. Gentle lights are great for stumble-free movie night and for quiet family nights spent together in conversation.
Double-up on your lighting solutions (or use dimmers and smart bulbs) to enjoy both well-lit rooms when it's time to clean and a gentle twilight when you're ready to relax. Here's how to make that twilight into a comforting ambiance in your home.
Canister lights are the leading way to illuminate a home in a soft yet ambient way. Distributed over the entire ceiling, canister lights provide points of illumination without casting shadows with either fixture hardware or distance from the ceiling.
At the same time, the entire room is lit without a single blinding or centralized point of light. This makes canister lights both ideal for full-brightness cleaning and to dim the whole room down to a pleasant twilight.
If you're looking for your home to be nicely visible yet also not glaringly well-lit, canister lights and a dimmer function are all you need to create soft, ambient light throughout the house.
Among the most popular options for a beautiful twilight at home is string lights, commonly called Christmas lights or holiday lights. Strings of lights are made up of dozens of tiny bulbs, colored or not, that are strung across wide spaces or used to accent the lines of your home.
Indoors, string lights create a twinkling effect much like walking under a sky of stars when the other lights are off. Professionally installed, string lights can be distributed more evenly and emplaced more permanently - and without taking up a power outlet.
The latest upgrade to string lights is strip lights. These are protected strips of LED diodes that form something more similar to a light-rope - only flat on one side so that it can be inlaid into the lines of your home and cabinetry.
Strip lights can actually supply surprisingly powerful illumination when needed and when dimmed, are often used as stylish accent lights in a modern home lighting design. Strip lights are used for outlining, back-lighting, and providing very handy illumination inside cabinets which we'll talk about in detail soon.
Every home has a few dark corners, often darker even than night-owls and fans of twilight lighting prefer. Consider the shadowy linen closet where the sheets can barely be determined on the cabinet shelf without stepping out of the way so living room lighting can shine through. Your garage may be unpleasantly shadowy, or you may have one awkward nook in the house where the light just doesn't reach.
With custom lighting, there are dozens of ways to gently illuminate these shadowy nooks & crannies without over-lighting your home with bright full-power fixtures. Modest night lights, elegant sconces, and strip lights are among the most popular solutions for a shadowy nook in the home.