lighting ideas for the family living room

You should start with 4 basic light sources for a living room lighting make over.

If you are using compact fluorescent lamps, I recommend (on the basis of lighting design) you replace these with incandescent lamps as compact fluorescent lamps are not dimmable.

The centre ceiling lights are fixed in the ceiling and provide the main source of light for the room. But as you will soon discover, they are the least ideal and least used light source in the suggestions for mood lighting scenes.

Ideally you should have the low level seating area / sofa table lamps positioned on a side table by the side of the sofa.

If the room is a large enough, then have one table lamp at each end of the sofa.

In my view, the low level TV light is one of the most important lighting positions in the family living room.

The reason being, that when viewing the TV in the evening, the images on the screen flash from dark to bright scenes over and over again. This constant change in light level puts pressure on your eyes as they continually adapt to the changing light levels.

Locate a low level floor standing lamp by the TV, or position it behind the TV if you can.

Now when this light is on (in our case a dimmed light level) the effect from it will reduce the amount of pressure your eyes need to adapt to the changing TV images, as you have a nominal light level in the back ground.

TIP: From personal experience, I can assure you that this light will improve your TV viewing pleasure, and will reduce or eliminate any eye strain you might normally get.

Position a floor standing up light in the 3rd corner of your living room.

The third corner of a room is one that does not have the TV or seating area. It might be the furthest point from the window or even behind the door. You will need a power point so you may not have many choices which corner to locate this light source.

The floor standing lamp, would ideally be a halogen up-lighter, I suggest no more than 150watts, and as it will be dimmed, so there is no need for a higher wattage.

TIP: I have found that with using both the floor standing halogen up-lighter and the table lamp, the ceiling lights are rarely required to be used. In some cases, I have just used the free standing lamps to provide all the lighting for the living room and removed the ceiling light fitting altogether.

Now we have our 4 basic lighting positions, ceiling light, sofa table lamps, TV low level light and floor standing up-lighter, the next step is to select the light dimmers.

Before we discuss light dimmers for the living room, you may want to learn a little more about light dimmers and how to choose light dimmers.

You can see my lens - Light Dimmers for Residential Lighting Design. This covers some of the technical aspects and the do and don'ts when choosing a light dimmer.

To complete the lighting make over for our living room, we require 4 light dimmers, 3 free standing lamp dimmers and 1 in-wall dimmer.

I use the Lutron Solina Table Lamp Dimmer. This in-line dimmer is ideal for the living room lighting make over as it simply plugs in to a standard UK 13Amp socket (there is also a 2 pin European version as well), then the lamp plugs in to the dimmer.

Its simple to operate - a double tap switches full on
One pre-set light level - a single tap switches the lamp on to the last dimmed level
The are two buttons to dim up and dim down

You will require one Lutron Solina Table Lamp Dimmer for each free standing lamp.

You can read more about the Lutron Solina in-line Dimmer with full fitting instructions

The Lutron Lyneo in wall incandescent light dimmer is ideal for the living room lighting make over as it simply replaces an existing light switch, as it only requires a 2 wire connection.

Again simple to operate, slide the button up and down to dim the lights. When the slider is fully down, the lights are switched off.

If you have 2 ceiling lights on a 2 gang switch, then you have a choice. You can either wire both lamps to one circuit, as it is unlikely you will ever want them dimmed to different levels, and in most cases, you will not need this light source, or if you do want to keep each light fitting on its own circuit, or you have ceiling lights and wall lights, then get the 2 gang Lutron Lyneo in-wall slide dimmer.

You can read more about the Lutron Lyeno in-wall slide light dimmers with full fitting instructions.

The single gang Lutron Lyneo in-wall slide dimmer will fit into both the UK square back box (35mm deep) and the European round back box (42mm deep).

This is the interesting and fun part as you now have the light fittings and the Lutron Light dimmers, you are ready to set up different mood lighting scenes.

I have given you some examples (see table below) on how to set the light values for different uses. Use this as a guide to start with, then adjust the settings to suite your own taste and what feels comfortable with you.

TIP: don't dim all the lights to the same value, the room will become quite dull.

Try this lighting sequence to see how the whole mood of a room changes.

Step 1 Dim the ceiling light and free standing floor up-lighter to say 75% on and the low level table lamp and TV lamp to say 10-20%, and then sit in the sofa.

Step 2 Now swap the values over so the ceiling light and free standing floor up-lighter are set to 10-20% and the table lamp and TV lamp are set to 75%, and again sit in the sofa.

You will feel that the lighting is more relaxing in the second setting, when the low level lighting is brighter than the ceiling lights.

You will also find you prefer slightly different light settings depending on the seasons. In the late autumn, winter and early spring months the day light drops early in the afternoon, so you may need two or even three different light settings, one brighter to light the room in the afternoon, then an early evening TV viewing light scene, and a late TV / film viewing scene.

In the summer months the day light is much longer, so you my only use one evening light scene.

You may not agree with all my ideas, but I hope you can take a way a few of the suggestions and adapt these to your family living room.

Words and interior photos by the lighting_designer

The Ikea up lighter image from www.ikea.com
The Lutron dimmers images are from lutron lighting | uk online shop