Domestic lighting, in our homes or gardens, allows us to move about safely and do the things that we need to do during the hours of darkness. With a little forethought, however, domestic lighting can be so much more than just a source of basic illumination. It can for example create mood or atmosphere in a room – thereby affecting the attitude and behaviour of its inhabitants – or add focus and depth to the overall effect.

There will, of course, always be the need for so-called “task” lighting in any home to light a desk or computer screen in a home office or worktops in a fitted kitchen for example. This type of lighting needs to be uniform and focussed; an Anglepoise® table lamp is probably the best known example of task lighting but there are many others.

This type of lighting, however, is in contrast to “ambient” or “background” lighting – often provided by a central ceiling fixture with incandescent, fluorescent, or compact fluorescent bulbs – which depends on the purpose of the room in question and the amount of natural light admitted to that room. A room with a high ceiling for example can be made to feel cosier by adding small lamps, singly or in groups, to create pools of light and shade close to floor level.

“Accent” lighting is a more directional form of lighting which can be used in combination with ambient lighting to pick out a certain feature or features – works of art, bookshelves etc. – so helping the eye of an observer as he or she looks around a room. Accent lighting can also be an important component of say bathroom design effectively allowing you to create colour, form and texture around the various features of your bathroom

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