As the nights gradually draw in on Lanzarote and the clocks go back at the end of this month, it may be time to rethink your lighting.
There are three types of lighting to consider when designing your living space. They are:
GENERAL LIGHTING
This is what you usually want when you hit the switch on entering a room – light that immediately illuminates the whole space. The main aim of general lighting is to imitate daylight, allowing you to see as much as possible as clearly as possible.
However, bright general lighting can quickly become tiring on the eye, and most people will want to soften it with other forms of lighting. A dimmer switch can make a big difference here, turning a brightly lit room into a more intimate place, where softly lit areas act as a neutral background for other lights.
ACCENT LIGHTING
Accent lighting is mainly aesthetic, used to highlight features. If you want an amazing example of how effective accent lighting can be, take a trip to the Cueva de los Verde in northern Lanzarote, where electrician Jésus Soto’s imagination and skill turned a long-abandoned cave into a magically beautiful place, which inspired Lanzarote’s unique tourist centres.
There are countless ways of accent lighting, from uplighters to spots, and this task deserves plenty of thought and planning to get the best results.
TASK LIGHTING
This gives light for activities. Task lighting, for example, is almost always present in kitchens and bathrooms, where good light is needed for grooming, making up and food preparation, but it also encompasses items such as reading lights or the illumination you choose around your laptop or computer.
To get some ideas about accent and task lighting in your room, experiment by trying to light your room with candles or tea lights for a couple of hours. Make sure you move them around and experiment, and you’ll soon get some strong ideas of where your accents should be placed, and where you’re going to need something a little stronger for specific tasks.
The established furniture shops and lighting specialists on the island are another source of ideas – they’ve lit thousands of interiors and will almost certainly have knowledge you never suspected you needed.
For regular updates, pictures and videos of Lanzarote be sure to like and follow our Facebook page “Gazette Life Lanzarote”.
