Jennifer Sheahan: How I maximise light in my home
Choose light-coloured paint and reflective surfaces, says Jennifer Sheahan. Pictures: Moya Nolan
Anyone else been stuck inside most of this “summer”? Yeah me too. Given how much I love my own house it’s not that bad of a punishment, but that’s easy for me to say. If you are also spending most of this summer sheltering from the rain, it’s going to be extra-gloomy if your home is dark.
Many Irish homes were built with small windows and without consideration for light maximisation. Many of us in cities also live in the shadow of taller buildings, or under the shade of tall trees and bushes.
Spending too much time without daylight has a terrible impact on our mood and our overall wellbeing. But don’t despair — there are ways and tricks to bring light into the darkest corners of our homes. Some require professional installation and some level of financial outlay, but others are quick and easy.
Here’s how to bring a little light into your life.
What’s a transom? You already know, though you may not have known the name — it’s a window above a door. Transoms were originally for ventilation but have evolved into a feature adding not only visual appeal but also providing supplemental light.
Transoms bring light through entryways even when the door is closed, maintaining privacy. They draw the eye up, adding height and — when designed well — elegance to a doorway.
Transoms can go above front doors, or above internal doors to facilitate light travelling between rooms. They can also be installed above existing windows, as a more affordable alternative to completely replacing your existing window-frame.
If your dark room has a roof, you can install a skylight to bring in as much daylight as possible. Skylights come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, and can either be fixed windows or have the ability to open and close for added ventilation.
I have a fixed skylight in the old chimney stack of my home — I no longer have a fireplace or a chimney, so adding a skylight here brings bright daylight into my windowless upstairs landing and bathroom.
Skylights are a more expensive option, and they require professional installation. When it comes to skylights, more is more — get the biggest one you can afford, and add as many as possible!
Sometimes rooms are too far from the roof to install skylights — this is where sun tunnels come in. Sun tunnels are a marvellous invention. They are effectively tubes that funnel light through from a roof, even if that roof is quite a distance from the ceiling of the dark room.
They have a highly reflective interior surface, ensuring maximum daylight gets into the room, and the diffused light that comes through is lovely. This makes sun tunnels a fantastic alternative to rooms where skylights are not suitable.
Best of all, sun tunnels are actually very easy to install, as they don’t require the same level of structural modification as skylights. Hooray for sun tunnels!
Mirrors are magic — read my recent feature to find out how to use them in your design to make your home feel more spacious.
Mirrors also have a wonderful ability to reflect light around a room, maximising the brightness.
Wherever you have light coming into a room, place a mirror opposite the source to reflect back as much light as possible. As well as mirrors, you can use metallic finishes and accents to reflect even more light. Consider brass light fixtures, gold leaf tiles, and gilded picture frames.
Your curtains and blinds may be blocking more light than you realise. If this is the case for you, consider swapping them out for a more sheer material. Sheer blinds or curtains are lightweight and translucent, so they allow light to filter through while still maintaining some privacy.
They also diffuse the light coming in, spreading it around the room and creating an elegant glow. If you need more privacy, you can combine sheer blinds with curtains — just make sure you hang your curtains higher and wider than your window, so that they don’t block out any light.
Choosing a light paint colour is key to maximising light. Lighter pigments in paint will reflect light back around the room, whereas darker pigments will absorb the light. You don’t have to go bright white — you can choose light neutrals or pale colours.
You can further maximise the impact by choosing a high gloss finish. While I personally don’t love a high gloss finish on walls, I do love it on ceilings, and that’s a great way to bounce some light around. You can also use it on skirting and architraves, which adds a little more luminosity.
A clever trick is to bring in some dark accents to highlight the contrast — this will make the light surroundings seem even brighter.
Similar to paint, light-coloured flooring will reflect more light back into the room. Light woods with a white stain, pale tiles with a gloss finish, or even a light carpet or rug will go a long way to brighten up the room.
Finally, light-coloured furniture will help too. You could take this a step further by choosing translucent pieces which let light through — I love my Philippe Starck Ghost chair replicas in my dining room — or metallic pieces which will reflect light back.
When bringing in daylight is just not an option, electricity will save the day. Good lighting design will transform a dark room when nothing else can.
Use a combination of overhead lighting, ambient light, and cosy accent lighting for different times of the day. Lamps can be strategically placed to brighten dark corners, and can be used to illuminate dark ceilings, and dimmer switches are always a good idea to allow you to adjust the lighting to your preference as you need.
- Got a question for Jennifer? Email home@examiner.ie
