Shine a light

The furnishings and the colour schemes are all fine, but it’s the lighting that makes or breaks your room. The chandeliers and lamps set the mood and theme—breathing life into your furniture and décor and making them look more appealing. James Thurber rightly talked about two kinds of lights: the glow that illuminates and the glare that obscures. You know you need to achieve the former and strictly avoid the latter. In a word—balance. But, how?

“Every room has a specific purpose and feel, and the lights should vary with the changing space,” says Amit Gupta, Director, Vis-a-Vis. It houses some of the biggest European brands and offers comprehensive lighting solutions for a variety of projects.

The living room is a space meant for you and the ones you entertain. If it reflects who you are, it needs to look inviting, warm and a little formal all at once. “Decorative lights like chandeliers, table and floor lamps are a must for a great looking living room, but accent and emotional lighting should come to the forefront,” says Gupta, adding: “Pick your favourite pieces—paintings, artworks and sculptures—and emphasise those objects with track mounted spotlights, placing it above other lights.” Keeping in mind Gupta’s power-packed clientele, the advice doesn’t come without an anecdote. “For a house in Prithviraj Road, I gave a special spotlight to light an artwork by M.F. Husain. The owners liked the square spot that the light produced so much that they removed the painting and got Husain to sign on the wall instead.” Vertical illumination is another technique that Gupta recommends highly.

“Vertical illumination means illuminating a vertical surface like a wall, from top to bottom without creating any scallops or hotspots. It adds volume to the space, making it look brighter and bigger. Tools like lens wall washers with well defined cut-off angles and dark-light reflector technology can be placed along the ceiling to achieve the desired effect,” he says.

When it comes to the bedroom, the rules of illumination are very different. It is an extremely private space, so efficiency and comfort are the key factors here. You read, sleep, relax, watch television in a bedroom, so, you should have the flexibility to switch between any of these activities at the touch of a button. “Use narrow beam pinhole directional pillow lights for bedtime reading, recessed wall washers with cut-off angles for vertical illumination, indirect dimmable source for ambient lighting, and decorative wall, table or pendant lamps for aesthetics,” says Gupta.

In any space, interior or exterior, efficient visual comfort and energy management is as critical as the colour of the wall, or the expensive artwork on it. “The key lies in choosing fixtures that make use of developed reflector technologies like dark-light and spherolit,” says Gupta. “They not only perform better in terms of accurate illumination and saving energy, but also don’t blind the occupants with lamp and reflector glare.”