In the current housing market, it is often hard to find affordable properties that have spacious rooms with lots of open lighting, and people can be put off by this. Buy Britain is here to explain how you can make the most out of these narrow spaces with the correct use of lighting and a little bit of creative thinking.
So, how do you light a narrow room? The key to lighting a narrow room is to add repeated lighting across the walls that accentuates the length of the room rather than drawing the eye to the narrowness of the room. Alternatively, adding repeated lights to the ceiling can also have the same effect by creating this illusion.
For all things lighting related such as how to utilise light to make a space look bigger, and how to light a hallway when you don’t have an outlet, carry on reading.
How Do You Light a Narrow Room?
When faced with lighting a narrow room, it can seem as though there are not many options that would make that room feel more open and airy, however there are a couple of tricks that you can try to help create an illusion to the eye whilst also not making any drastic structural changes to the layout of your house. Below we have listed our main lighting tips to help you make those frustrating narrow rooms feel a little larger.
Integrated Wall Lights:
Using integrated wall lights can help to make a narrow room feel larger due to the fact that all of the wiring and fittings are hidden behind the wall fitting. This means that the light fitting is clean and flush to the wall, which reduces visual clutter, and allows for the light to illuminate the room, creating the illusion of a larger room.
Installing integrated wall lights may seem a little tricky due to them needing to be installed behind the wall structure. However, a good way to get around this would be to install the integrated wall lights to a wall panel which you then attach on top of your original wall so that it doesn’t get damaged. This can work particularly well in rented housing where you cannot make structural changes to the building but we would always advise to check your tenancy agreement before making any drastic changes.
Remove the Main Light:
Another key tip for helping to improve the light in a narrow room is to remove the main light in the room. Often, when you have one main light in the centre of any room, never mind a narrow room, it can create the illusion that the room is not only smaller but a lot darker. The main light tends to focus on highlighting the centre of the room whilst simultaneously leaving the corners of the room in the dark which makes the room seem smaller.
Suspended Lights:
In some properties you may find that the rooms are narrow but have rather high ceilings and you can use this to your advantage. You can utilise the high ceilings by installing suspended lights which will draw the eye to the height in the room rather than the narrow proportions. This will make the narrow room feel less claustrophobic and create the illusion that the narrow room is actually quite spacious.
What Kind of Light Makes a Room Look Bigger?
Sometimes it might be that the room you are trying to decorate is not necessarily narrow, but instead just quite small, and figuring out how to make the room look bigger using lighting can seem impossible. However, if you get a little creative with your lighting arrangements it can actually help to make the room seem bigger than you would have imagined.
Slim Lighting:
When decorating a small room, it can be hard to find room for large furniture, never mind big bulky lamps. As such, it is a good idea to look into lighting options that are more streamlined and slim in style. This can help to make the room feel bigger because it reduces the amount of clutter in the space and opens up more walking space. Plus, with the added light you get from slim lights you would be accentuating spaces in the room that would not have been highlighted previously.
Small Statement Lights:
Instead of having one large statement light in a small room it can be a good idea to utilise smaller more unique statement lights around the room. This can create the illusion of a larger room because it attracts the eye to different aspects of the room rather than one large focal point. It is important to ensure that you get a good balance of having a couple of smaller statement lights, but not too many that it creates clutter and makes the room feel even smaller. Arranging the lights at different levels and areas of the room can really help with avoiding this issue.
Utilising Mirrors:
In a small space it can also be quite effective to hang mirrors opposite lights to help make the room feel bigger. The mirror will not only reflect the artificial and natural light throughout the room but will also reflect the walls to create the illusion that the light is alot bigger than it is. In a small room, we would recommend not to choose a mirror that is too bulky, but rather one that is more streamlined so that it can work its magic without being too big and distracting.
What Colour Light is Best For a Hallway?
When choosing the correct choice of colour lighting for your hallway it is important to remember that hallways tend to be quite cold spaces with little furniture to make it feel cosy, therefore any way that you can add some warmth and light simultaneously is ideal. This is why we recommend choosing a warm or more yellow coloured light for hallways; the warm coloured light both lights up aspects of the room you are trying to accentuate whilst also giving the illusion that the space is not a hallway but part of a warmer and cosy home.
How Do You Light a Hallway Without an Outlet?
It may be easy to believe that if you have no outlets in your hallway then you won’t be able to make the space feel bigger through the use of lighting, but Buy Britain is here to show you how that is not the case. There are actually multiple different tricks you can use to help add light to the room without any electricity or plug in sockets.
For example, one method would be utilising wireless hanging lights that are powered by batteries to accentuate both the length of the walls and space in the room whilst also using no plug in sockets. These types of lights are great because they can be moved around easily to test where you think they create the best aesthetic and also can be really affordable.
Another method of lighting a hallway without an outlet could be through the use of candles. Obviously we are not saying to use candles as your only source of light within a hallway, but if you have a window in your hallway you may find that, on an evening, arranging candles around the hallway actually creates quite a cosy and warm atmosphere, alongside your wireless hanging lights.
As previously mentioned, mirrors can also work as a great tool alongside small lighting such as candles and wireless hanging lights to reflect the light throughout the room and create the illusion that there is more light in the room than there actually is. This can be quite useful, especially in the case where there is limited or even no plug in outlets within the room.
Lighting for Narrow Rooms at Buy Britain
Buy Britain is the largest shoppable marketplace for British-made products, connecting you with amazing businesses from around the country who offer a variety of high quality unique products. Included within these products are an array of lighting solutions such as table lamps, wall lamps and ceiling and pendant lights. For more information about Buy Britain’s products click here.
