Inspiration & Tips/Care advice & Guides/How to plan your lighting

Plan the lighting in your home with our top tips, here you see a children's bedroom with multiple light sources like a string of lights a table lamp and a floor lamp.

How to plan the lighting in your home – our top tips

Most homes are under-lit, lit in the wrong places or lit by a single ceiling fixture doing a job meant for five. Great lighting is about layering different types of light so a room can shift from bright and functional in the morning to warm and relaxed in the evening. This guide walks you through exactly how to do that, room by room, with the considerations and combinations professional lighting designers actually use.

Updated Thursday 17th September 2026

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The three layers every room needs

Every well-lit room combines three layers of light. Skip one, and the room can end up feeling flat or even harsh no matter how many lamps you add.

Ambient (general) lighting is the room's base layer, this is the overall illumination that lets you move around safely and see the space as a whole. This is usually a ceiling or pendant light that work to illuminate the whole room.

Task lighting is focused, functional light for a specific activity: reading, cooking, applying make-up, working at a desk. It needs to be brighter and more direct than ambient light, and positioned so you're not working in your own shadow.

Accent (mood) lighting is the layer that gives a room atmosphere and depth — table lamps, floor lamps, wall lights and even candles. It's usually the lowest and warmest light in the room, and it's what makes a space feel considered rather than merely lit.

A room that relies on ambient light alone will feel clinical. A room with only lamps and no general light will feel dim and impractical, especially when it comes to cleaning or working in such a room. The rooms that feel effortlessly right almost always have all three layers working together — and the fix for a room that is lacking is almost never a bigger ceiling light, it's a missing layer.

A hand adjusts a glowing dark green mushroom-shaped table lamp on a white shelf next to a matching storage crate.

Tom DixonBell Portable LED table lamp 28 cm

Torrano pendant lamp 30 cm

Rosso Levanto

$279

Directional vs. diffused light

Within each layer, light also behaves in one of two ways. Directional light is aimed at a specific point — a reading lamp angled at an armchair so you can sit and read, a spotlight or LED strip over a kitchen counter, a picture light directly over your artwork. It's what makes task lighting effective. Diffused light spreads softly in all directions, bouncing off walls and ceilings — this is what makes ambient and mood lighting feel comfortable rather than glaring. A well-planned room mixes both: directional light where you need to focus, diffused light everywhere you want to relax.

A cozy room with a cream fluffy armchair, a beige adjustable floor lamp, and a dark wooden shelf with art and books.

Ava Cone pendant 50 cm

White

$260

A cozy living room with a light-colored linen sofa, a floor lamp, and a side table with books and a bowl.

CO BankerydRain floor lamp

$346

DIFFUSED LIGHT

Diffused light does the opposite of directed light. It spreads the light more widely throughout the room and often has a softer glow, we see this mainly see this in mood lighting, but general lighting can also give off a more diffused glow. If you start by combining the three types of lighting, you will naturally achieve a variation of directional and diffused light in your home, which gives the home the right conditions for decorating with lighting in the best possible way.

A modern table lamp with a ribbed, transparent column and circular base and top, emitting a warm glow on a countertop next to a brown booklet.

Design For The PeopleTrezzi portable table lamp

$224.89

A glowing square floor lamp with thin legs next to a light green sofa and a coffee table with books.

HAYPaper Cube floor lamp

GENERAL LIGHTING

Unlike targeted functional lighting, general lighting illuminates an entire room with a broader, diffused light. Hallway and bathroom lighting in the form of ceiling and pendant lights are classic examples of general lighting that illuminates the whole room. It is also a good idea to have general lighting in other rooms in the home, like the living room or kitchen for those moments when you need a little extra illumination!

MOOD LIGHTING

Mood lighting is exactly what you would expect, lighting we use to create a softer and more inviting atmosphere in the home. Mood lighting is a beautiful complement to the other forms of lighting and can take the form of anything from a beautiful table lamp to candles that give off a warm glow.

Plan your lighting with general lighting in larger rooms like the hanging Formakami paper lamp from &Tradition.

&TraditionFormakami pendant

Planning your lighting doesn't just need to mean electric lamps but also includes candle lights. Here you see the Audo Copenhagen candle hold in the house of German influencer @haus_tannenkamp.

@haus_tannenkamp

Stedge wall shelf 80 cm

white-pigmented oak

$509

Our top tip is to use a dimmer to turn functional lighting into mood lighting. If you don't have access to a dimmer, there are bulbs with a dimmer function that you can control through the regular switch, such as the E27 LED Normal from Globen Lighting. When you switch on the light source for the first time, it will be at 100% brightness, if you switch off the lamp and switch it on immediately, the light source will dim down one step. If you complete the same procedure again, you dim the light source a third time.

The 5–10 light source rule

A well-lit room typically has somewhere between five and ten individual light sources. That sounds like a lot until you count what actually qualifies: a ceiling or pendant light, a floor lamp, one or two table lamps, wall lights, under-cabinet or shelf lighting, and candles all count as separate sources. Spreading light across several smaller sources — rather than one strong overhead fixture — is what avoids harsh shadows and lets you dial a room up for activity or down for atmosphere, especially once each source is on its own switch or dimmer.

When planning your lighting consider multiple light sources in each room. Here you see a living room with the Gubi floor lamp and the Scandi Living Fair and the &Tradition Flowerpot table lamps.

5 – 10 light sources are the recommendation for each room, but perhaps mainly for the living room. How many do you currently have?

Canelé table lamp

Soft blue

$229

Think about including multiple light sources when it comes to planning your lighting. Here you see a dining table with lots of different table lamps and a dramatic ceiling lamp.

Soft Serve portable table lamp

Cloudberry, 23 cm

$269

Trezzi portable table lamp

Room-by-room lighting plans

Living room lighting

The living room often does more jobs than any other room so it needs all three layers working independently. Combine a ceiling or pendant light for ambient coverage, a floor lamp beside the sofa or reading chair for task light, and one or two table lamps for evening atmosphere. Put the ambient layer on a dimmer so the room can move from bright and social to low and relaxed without changing a single bulb.

Bedroom lighting ideas

Bedrooms need gentle, warm, low-glare light above almost everything else. A pendant or flush ceiling light covers general use, but the real workhorses are bedside lights — table lamps or adjustable wall lights positioned so you can read without glare or without disturbing a partner. A dimmer or a warm-toned lamp for the hour before sleep makes a measurable difference to how restful the room feels.

Kitchen lighting

The kitchen needs the widest brightness range of any room in the house. General lighting keeps the space usable for moving around and eating, but worktops, the hob and the sink need dedicated, shadow-free task lighting — typically under-cabinet strips or directional spotlights. Over a kitchen island or dining table, pendant lights angled downward add both task light and character. Keep worktop lighting closer to neutral white (3000–4000K) so food colours read accurately, and let the general room lighting stay warmer.

Dining room lighting ideas

Dining spaces live and die by the pendant or chandelier above the table — but it should never be the only light in the room. Pair it with wall lights or a sideboard lamp so the room doesn't go dark the moment the main fixture is dimmed for a meal, and put everything on dimmers. Common mistake: hanging the pendant too high or too low — as a guide, the bottom of the fixture should sit roughly 70–80cm above the tabletop.

Home office

This is the one room where cooler, brighter light earns its place — 4000K or above helps with focus during the working day. Position a task lamp so light falls across your desk without casting your own shadow over your work or creating glare on a screen; light from the side is usually better than light from directly behind or in front of you. Add a warmer secondary lamp for evenings, since a home office lit like an operating theatre after 6pm makes it hard to switch off, literally and figuratively.

Bathroom

General lighting keeps the room easy and usable, but the mirror needs its own dedicated light — ideally from the sides or surrounding the mirror rather than directly overhead. Keep colour temperature close to neutral white (2700–3000K) so colours and make up read true. Common mistake: a single downlight above the mirror, which lights the top of your head and shadows your face.

Hallway & entryway

Hallways are transitional spaces, so they don't need to be bright, but they do need to be even. A ceiling or pendant light is usually enough, topped up with a console or wall light near the entrance to make the first impression of your home a warm one rather than a bare, under-lit one.

Kids' room

Kids' rooms need to do two opposite jobs: bright enough for play and homework, calm enough for sleep. A dimmable ceiling light covers both if paired with a soft, low-glare lamp or night light for bedtime — ideally one your child can reach and switch on themselves. Avoid harsh cool-white light here; warm tones support winding down at night far better than daylight-mimicking bulbs.

Outdoor & balcony

Outdoor lighting is often the most overlooked layer of all. Even a small balcony benefits from a warm, low-level light source — string lights, a portable lamp, or a wall light by the door — both for safety on the step and for making the space usable after dark. Keep outdoor fixtures rated for the exposure they'll get, and lean warm (2700K or below) to keep the space feeling relaxed rather than like a car park.