FIVE TECHNIQUES WORTH KNOWING
Several lighting techniques have crossed over from commercial design into residential use. Most are easier to install than they look, especially during a remodel or while finishing a room. • LINEAR LIGHTING. Long, narrow fixtures available as channels, tubes, or strips. Useful for a continuous wash of light along a counter, under a cabinet, or across a hallway. Can be surface- mounted, suspended, or recessed. • COVE LIGHTING. Indirect light tucked into a built-in ledge or recessed channel near the ceiling, aimed up at the ceiling or down a nearby wall. Softens a room’s edges and adds a sense of height. Works for both function and atmosphere. Combine any of these with traditional sconces and pendants, and a small room can feel several rooms larger than it actually is. Guest baths in particular benefit from this kind of layering. • TOE-KICK LIGHTING. Strips installed beneath cabinets and vanities, low to the floor. Functions as a soft accent at night and as a useful path light when you don’t want to flip on the overhead. • SOFFIT LIGHTING. Lighting recessed into a soffit or pocket, often on the ceiling, used to direct a beam at a particular angle. Common in kitchens above the sink and in entries above a console. • GRAZING . Light placed close to a wall so it skims the surface, exaggerating texture. Beautiful on stone, brick, plaster, and wood paneling. The same wall lit head-on goes flat; lit by a grazing fixture, it has depth.
Older homes were rarely designed with maximum natural light in mind, and the floor plans from earlier decades tend to chop the house into smaller, walled- off rooms. In a place like that, when the rooms feel closed in, the first question to settle is what you actually want to change. The goal might be ceilings that feel higher, rooms that feel bigger, or more daylight reaching the dim corners. Each of those points to a different lighting move. The most reliable instinct is to push light to the walls. Wall washing, sconces, and grazing all open a room visually, because the eye reads brightness at the perimeter as more space. A pair of well-placed sconces can make a hallway feel twice as wide. Cove lighting along the ceiling line can make an eight-foot ceiling read closer to nine. Bigger interventions help when the budget allows. Removing a wall to combine a kitchen with a dining or living area opens sightlines and lets light from one set of windows reach further into the house. A transom or a borrowed-light window between two interior rooms can move daylight from a bright space into a dim one without major construction. Homes from different eras respond differently, so look for the path that suits the way you actually live. BRINGING LIGHT INTO AN OLDER HOME
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