Three Tips For Designing With Light

The use of light is an integral element in art, architecture and design. It has the power to dramatically change the look and feel of everything, from a sculpture to a family room or even a hallway.

Incorporating lighting elements into a home can alter the ambiance from clean and modern to warm and rustic, creating specific moods and enhancing colors and textures.

Consider these tips for bringing both natural and artificial light elements into your home design for breathtaking results:

* Let the natural light shine in. Windows bring the dynamic qualities of daylight into a home, capturing outside views, enhancing colors, and flooding surfaces, rooms or any interior spaces with natural light.

However, bringing in more natural sunshine can increase the temperature of a room due to heat transfer through windows. To get the natural sun without unwanted temperature changes, you may want to consider tinted glass to help reduce the transfer of heat.

In addition to capitalizing on natural light through the strategic placement of windows, you can choose from a broad scope of window shapes, juxtapositions and designs to create an artistic flair. For an abundance of design capabilities, including limitless custom designs crafted by artisans, consider Jeld-Wen wood or metal clad-wood windows.

If energy efficiency and low maintenance are a primary concern, Jeld-Wen vinyl windows will offer you these affordable features along with a clean, streamlined appearance.

* Use decorative lights for night and day. The imaginative use of alternative lighting can showcase unique features inside and outside the home.

Instead of using traditional overhead lighting or table lights, artistically combine shadows and light with subtle tree lights lining the edges of the ceiling or a chandelier with a dimmer.

* Reflect light to enhance the ambiance. Often overlooked as a key element in the lighting of a home, mirrors have traditionally been utilized solely as a tool for personal reflection. The creative placement of mirrors can throw light around the room, making a room sparkle and appear larger.

While an entire wall of mirrors may seem a little risky, the placement of framed mirrors sporadically on a particular wall brings a fresh, artistic element into the home.

Regardless of its source - whether it's natural light that streams in through a window or the soft glow from a table lamp or chandelier - lighting is an important decorative accessory in a home.