How To Choose The Right Paint Colours To Go With Your Lighting Designs

Lighting is definitely one of the most important decorative and functional elements to adorn your space, but you may end up killing your decor if you don’t choose the right backdrop for your designs. You read it right, the colours that you choose for your space will massively affect the way your lighting designs look or function in the space. This stands true the other way around too. The lighting design can either make the colours shine out elegantly or just create a dull and gloomy atmosphere inside. You may envision something for your home but end up with something else if you don’t plan the lighting layout properly, especially with the colours involved. 

One thing that homeowners need to understand is that the colours of their homes won’t look the same the entire day. Every colour of your home will look different during the day and entirely different during the night. Why does this happen? Well, there are a lot of reasons and a lot of scientific jargon involved, but we’ll keep it simple for you. The primary colours that you see every day depend on two important factors. The key factor is how much light a specific colour absorbs. For example, black is known to absorb all the wavelengths of light, and white absorbs none of them. The second factor is the source of the light, as natural light and artificial light have different effects on the colours. We’ll take you through it in detail and help you choose the ideal colour for your fabulous abode. 

Ideal Colours For Homes With A Lot Of Natural Light

The mutual interaction between sunlight and the colours can add a distinct charm to your gorgeous abodes. And there’s no denying that the colours of your home will look their best when they interact with natural light. Every colour’s exposure to natural light can influence the visuospatial perception of your space and lend to the ambience of your living space too. 

Now, the sun keeps moving throughout the day, and the amount of natural light streaming through your space will also vary throughout the day. The changing angles of the sun should also be taken into consideration for your space. We have a tiny guide for you that keeps things simple and makes it easier for you to adorn your living space and add the flavour you’ve always sought. The direction your room faces can is instrumental in deciding the colour of your space and if you aren’t too sure about the directions, then make sure that you have a compass handy. 

 

North-Facing Rooms: For the rooms facing north, you need to be ready for a cool and bluish light throughout the day, regardless of the position of the sun and the time of the day. The best way to decorate this room is to complement the cool vibe. And you definitely need to remember that bolder colours look way better here than muted shades or neutral hues. Some of the colours that work best in this space are blues, greys, greens and certain shades of white. You can choose to go with warm colours too if that’s truly what you prefer. But it will totally offset the cool effect and not complement the natural lighting completely. While the mentioned shades will bring the best out of your room in the daytime, your lighting designs won’t hamper the effect much either. Keep reading to find out how artificial lighting influences your decor. 

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South-Facing Rooms: For the rooms that face south, you’ll have a mix of cool and warm lighting. The good news is that you can totally make the best out of this flawless symphony, and designing this room isn’t that tricky. For a south-facing room, you can have light colours and dark colours as well. You can go all out with this space if you’re into dark decor. However, we’re slightly inclined towards warmer shades as they are the best for this room in any given condition. The best shades are beige, warm taupe, and warm grey and if you’re looking for that edge, then consider going with a creamy greige. 

South-Facing Rooms

East-Facing Rooms: With east-facing rooms, the entire thing gets really tricky. While this space will be totally lit up until midday, the light turns bluer in the second half. You need to choose colours that don’t become lacklustre in the evening. The safest primary colour options for the room include shades of red, orange and yellow. And if you want a distinct charm in the space, then consider going with shades like macadamia, off-white and warm greige.

East-Facing Rooms

West-Facing Rooms: Last on the list is the west-facing room, which is slightly more trickier than the rest to decorate. A west-facing room gets scant lighting in the morning, and you’ll be looking at a glimmering warm shade until dusk. The best shades for this room include canvas tan, cream and a near-neutral grey.

West-Facing Rooms

But what will you do if the room has more than one exposure? While it does get trickier, we have the mystery solved out for you. If the room has more exposures, then the key is to focus on the dominant exposure, and the same shades from above will help you out. If you have light coming in from the northwest and the northeast, you’ll have a blue shade throughout the day. A southwestern exposure will bring a warm and bright shade to the room, which gets brighter in the second half of the day. A south-eastern exposure will add a soft, warm shade to the space. 

Colours That Go Best With Artificial Lighting 

We’ve already told you that a particular colour is bound to look slightly different under natural lighting and artificial lighting, and it will definitely look different at different times of the day with the varying sunlight. The term that explains this phenomenon is metamerism. Due to the phenomenon, you might end up painting your home with colours that look exceptionally bright in the daylight and become lacklustre by evening and vice versa. 

We have a brief guide for you that will help you out in choosing the right colours for your space that look good under artificial light too. While most lighting designs use LED bulbs nowadays, there are possibilities that you may find yourself using a design with incandescent bulbs, fluorescent bulbs or CFL bulbs too. Hence, we cover all four lighting sources. 

LED lighting: The most commonly used light source across all fixtures, LEDs are very flexible and come with virtually no restrictions when it comes to choosing the right colour scheme for your space. Warm and cool shades look equally good with these lighting fixtures around. 

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Incandescent or Halogen lighting: Not very common, but these fixtures can lend an exceptional warm shade to your space. The warm-yellow shade of incandescent fixtures can beautifully brighten warm colours and dull the cooler shades in the room. The natural choice of colours for this space are red, orange, yellow and similar hues. While the ones to completely avoid is the blue/green/grey family. 

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Fluorescent or CFL lighting: These lighting fixtures emit a blueish and cooler shade, and they perfectly complement the blue/green/grey family. They are known to dull warmer shades like red, orange and yellow. CFLs, on the other hand, mostly have warm white or neutral shades, but you can also find ones with bluish-white shades. 

Choose The Right Lighting Designs For Your Living Space

While the natural lighting and artificial lighting part is sorted out for you, we have reached the last and another important aspect of decorating your space. Now that you know how lighting and colours work, you also have to understand that the positioning of the lighting designs in the space can also influence how your space looks.  

Overhead lighting designs are the best fixtures you can choose for your home, as they distribute the lighting well throughout the space and create minimal shadows. While chandeliers are the ideal fixtures to go with, you may even go with pendant lights or ceiling lights if your space is slightly compact.

On the other hand, lamps are the best choice for spaces that don’t get a lot of natural light. Since lamps are ambient lighting fixtures, they won’t influence the colours of your wall much. Going with table lamps, floor lamps or wall lights, you restrict the source of light to one point hence limiting the impact of lighting on the colours of the room. 

Head on to our homepage to feast your eyes on some of the finest luxury lighting designs you’ve ever laid your eyes on. Also, keep an eye out on this space for more such tips and tricks to transform your beautiful abodes.